Don't Demand Purity Unless You Offer It
Item
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Title
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Don't Demand Purity Unless You Offer It
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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. As American men returned home from fighting in Europe’s trenches of World War I, they brought with them high numbers of syphilis and gonorrhea. During the interwar years, the ASHA’s 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. This poster confronts young men with questions of purity, honor, and cleanliness as euphemisms for sexually transmitted disease. From the perspective of these experts, the only women who engaged in sex outside of marriage were sex workers, whom society regarded not only as “dirty” and “impure”, but, moreover, the source of venereal disease. Therefore, if a man engaged in sex outside of marriage, he inherently ran the risk of contracting a sexual infection. Lest a young man be tempted into sex before marriage, this poster, which notably assumes the heterosexuality of its male reader, urges him to consider his future bride. A man who exposed an innocent girl to venereal disease through marriage, experts argued, made him nothing more than a hypocrite and an immoral crook.
Posters such as this one were created by the public health experts of the ASHA to serve as a teaching tool. Educators and parents could utilize this poster to visually and simply inform the young people in their care about a wide variety of uncomfortable and awkward topics, such as hygiene, sexually transmitted infections, abstinence, marriage, 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
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Rights
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This item was published in the United States more than 95 years ago and is therefore in the public domain.
