Conventions Which Bring Freedom
Item
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Title
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Conventions Which Bring Freedom
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Creator
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American Social Health Association
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Description
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The American Social Health (originally “Hygiene”) Association (ASHA) was established in 1913 at a professional public health conference in Buffalo, New York. Its initial purpose was to combat the rampant cases of venereal disease in the nation’s military. During the interwar years, its purpose expanded to include public education about what was, according to these experts, the relationship between individual health and high moral standards. To support this purpose, the ASHA aimed to prevent venereal disease, sex work, and drug addiction in New York through educational, legal, and medical measures.
Arguably, their most successful campaign was the production and proliferation of printed materials related to social hygiene. The ASHA created this poster as part of its “Youth and Life Exhibit” series. The poster encourages young women to socialize with young men around the safety of their family and friends. Interacting with a young man under the watchful eye of others, experts argued, freed young women from the risk of contracting venereal disease and the shame of impurity attached to a woman who engaged in sex outside of marriage.
Posters such as this one were distributed to students and parents as a teaching tool. Parents could utilize this poster to inform the young people in their care about a wide variety of uncomfortable and awkward topics, such as hygiene, abstinence, marriage, sexually transmitted infections, and puberty.
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Date
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1922
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Format
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8.5 inch x 11 inch Poster
