advertising images

Early advertising images of woman and fire fighting

Some positive, and some predictably "erotic".

In a national web-survey I conducted in 2005-2006 in Australia, female fire fighters indicated that they felt the portrayal of female fire fighters needed improvement within the fire services. Until the first National Women in Firefighting Conference, 2005, women were routinely portrayed as office workers or caterers in the fire services. Women playing these roles provide critical support for fire fighters, and I believe they should continue to be celebrated. But women should be shown in all their roles- including fire fighting.

In 2004, prior to the Women in Fire Fighting Conferences, no fire service in Australia routinely portrayed women as fire fighters on their web sites. The United Fire Fighters Union in WA still called firefighters "firemen", and the issues female fire fighters faced on the job were largely invisible. By 2008, the portrayal of female fire fighters had improved. The NSWFB, for example, often uses images of female fire fighters in its advertising campaigns.

These three advertisements (the 2 Pyrene ones from USA magazines, c 1920-30s, and the Sarah Dixon and Sons, Leeds, GB, c 1920) are the earliest I have found portaying western women fighting fires. Two of them are pyrene advertisements, and the third shows a female office-worker using a hose to put out an office fire. Nowadays of course, she would have evacuated the building!

The extraordinary advertisement to the left has the title "If Women Were Guardians of Public Safety". It is quite hard to work out if the following words are suggesting more buildings would burn down....or less...if women were guardians of public safety. They are hosing down the remains of a burnt building, and the text says:

"If women were guardians of public safety, how many buildings would lack the simple means of extinguishing a fire in the vital five-minute-period...."

The advertisements appears to be impyling that if women were guardians, more buildings would burn down....but this contradicts the other images Pyrene used at the time, showing women as critical in the first five minutes of fighting fires in domestic settings.

The text says "Without pyrene, the bungalow would have burnt to the ground."

The words "female" and "fire fighting" put in the same sentence have long evoked ribald or pornographic images. Unfortunately, it's easy to find such images on the internet.

Shown here are two early images that sexualise the link between "women" and "fire fighting".

Sexualising fire fighters - whether male or female - has a long tradition, and not only within the heterosexual community. Images of females in fire fighting uniform is also an expression of lesbian eroticism.

Images on this page are owned by Dr Merilyn Childs.