The event was held in the National WWII Museum, which is, for some reason, in New Orleans. Before heading down to the conference, I had been interested in visiting the museum, because who doesn't love WWII? It's obviously the BEST WAR ever. Anyway, there wasn't really enough time, and after I had seen all the billboards advertising the museum around town I felt a little turned off by the super-hetero-masculine yay-big-machines-and-weapons vibe. What the hell is a 4-D movie anyway? (That's rhetorical; I don't actually want to know.) And when did Tom Hanks become America's official WWII ambassador? (No offense intended to Mr. Hanks.) But then it turned out all the archivists would get to play in the museum at night, so great, I would get to see it after all.
And... the part of the museum we were in for the reception was basically an airplane hangar full of tanks and torpedoes (I think it's called "the Freedom Pavilion"?), but okay, we were a very large group of increasingly drunk weirdos so it might have been the only space that could hold us all. I eventually noticed a lot of hot pin-up girls emblazoned around, in their iconic 40s hair-styles, and realized that a number of these were posters for, quote, "The National WWII Museum’s charming vocal trio, the Victory Belles," who will take you on a "nostalgic journey" down "memory lane" with "spirited performances" of "timeless" musical classics, blarf blarrrf blarghhhff.
Now I know I started the week with a feminist archivist symposium, but I'm pretty sure this would have set off my alarms anyway. You know what IS a timeless classic? Tone-deaf misogynistic tokenism! You can purchase their music and other souvenirs here, but my favorite pick is the Precious Moments Dolls. Just like in real life, you can choose "Blonde, Brunette, Redhead, or collect all three!"
And seriously, don't even get me started on WWII Monopoly. My co-workers and I converged on this item in a corner of the hangar that was set up as a makeshift gift shop. Probably Jewish-history archivists who spend a lot of time with Holocaust-era documents are NOT Hasbro's intended audience for this game, but we can't be the only people confused by the idea that the goal is to build "camps" instead of hotels...?
Back to the Belles. This is the part that kills me. I'm chatting with the bartender at one of the tables serving drinks. She's about my age; maybe a little younger, but not by a lot. I notice she's got a really great nail-art manicure, with stencils of stripes and anchors and stars. Oh, it's patriotic, I think.
"Did you get them done like that for this job?" I ask. "So cute."
"Thanks," she says. "No. Well, I usually work in the restaurant here, so I guess so. They go with the dresses."
"What dresses?" I ask, because she is wearing the basic-black outfit of all catered events.
"They have us wear the dresses from the shop, like the vintage style ones."
"REALLY?" My mouth is actually hanging open slack-jawed. Where am I and how did I get here? "You have to wear a fancy dress to serve food at a restaurant? That seems like a terrible idea!" I laugh. (It is probably a good thing that I laugh at myself a lot when I talk because otherwise people would realize what a total jerk I am.)
"Well, I'm the hostess," she says. "But I love them! It's like totally my fashion era. Sometimes I think I should have been around back then."
I don't even think before I open my mouth and say, "You know it was a really horrible time to be alive, right?"
She laughs and says, "Yeah, I guess so!"
Oh, we laugh and laugh and everyone lives happily ever after.
Really. I just don't. I can't. It's not this girl. I like a bunch of stuff about 1940's fashion, too. It's just the whole scene. The whole point of what we're doing. Why are we preserving history anyway, if it's not to learn anything from it? This is the NATIONAL WORLD WAR TWO museum. Presumably, in some part, funded by the government, and run by educated people who've at least taken high-school level history courses and have access to our country's collective knowledge bank of archives and artifacts and documentary evidence and really? REALLY? The best we can do is package it up with some 4-D "dazzling special effects," some platitudes about "freedom" and "glory," and wrap it all in a red-white-and-blue polyester dress made in China?
Well, America, I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.
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