Smart Girls Read Romance

 

Patriotism at Home: How Americans Showed Love for Country During WWII ~ Sherri Easley

I have been retired from my corporate job for an entire 6 weeks now and finally got to my writing. Being neurodivergent, I struggle with staying on task for anything and don’t have enough space to list all of my unfinished projects, including sewing, DIY repairs, gardening, and writing. I have–no kidding- four different novels across three genres, started, and several more with draft outlines.

My current work is YA- Kathryn, and it will be book one of a 4 or 5 book series about young women during WWII who overcame the obstacles to become one of the female WASP pilots who trained in Sweetwater, Texas.

When we think of World War II, we often picture soldiers overseas. But patriotism during WWII wasn’t only fought on battlefields; it could be found at dinner tables, in backyards, in factories, and even on women’s lips.

Here are a few powerful (and surprisingly romantic) ways Americans showed their devotion at home.

Red Lipstick: Morale as a Weapon

During WWII, red lipstick became an act of patriotism.

Cosmetics were one of the few consumer goods not heavily rationed. The government understood morale mattered. Leaders encouraged women to maintain a polished, confident appearance, not out of vanity, but as psychological resilience.

• Shades like “Victory Red” became popular.
• Elizabeth Arden created a special red to match women’s military uniforms.
• Even as fabric, sugar, and gasoline were rationed, lipstick symbolized strength, optimism, and normalcy.

Adolf Hitler reportedly despised red lipstick, which only made American women wear it more proudly. It became a small but visible defiance.

In a time of fear and uncertainty, red lips said: We are still here. We are still strong.

Victory Gardens: Feeding the Nation

With commercial crops diverted to feed troops, Americans were urged to grow their own food. By 1943, Nearly 20 million Victory Gardens were planted. They produced about 40% of the nation’s vegetables.

Backyards, schoolyards, and vacant city lots transformed into rows of tomatoes and bean trellises. Gardening wasn’t just practical; it reduced pressure on the supply chain and reinforced a collective mindset: everyone contributes.

It was patriotism you could harvest.

Rationing and Resourcefulness

Americans lived under strict rationing:

• Sugar, coffee, meat, butter
• Gasoline and tires
• Silk and nylon (diverted for parachutes)

Families used ration books and saved bacon grease for munitions production. Women painted lines up the backs of their legs when stockings became unavailable. Clothing was mended, repurposed, and handed down.

Weddings were smaller. Celebrations were simpler. Sacrifice became a shared language of loyalty.

Women in the Workforce

With millions of men overseas, women stepped into industrial roles in unprecedented numbers.

• Over 6 million women entered the workforce during the war.
• “Rosie the Riveter” became an icon of capability and determination.
• Women worked in shipyards, aircraft plants, and munitions factories.

Patriotism wasn’t passive; it wore coveralls (oversized zoot suits in Kathryn’s case) and wielded rivet guns.

Letters and Bonds

Civilians supported troops by:

• Writing millions of letters
• Purchasing war bonds to finance military efforts
• Taking part in scrap metal drives

War bond campaigns alone raised billions of dollars to fund operations. Even children collected rubber and aluminum. No one was too small to serve.

Why This Matters for Romance Writers

WWII patriotism wasn’t abstract. It lived in:

• Lipstick carefully applied before a factory shift
• A fiancé planting tomatoes alone
• A letter folded and unfolded until the ink faded
• A wedding postponed “until he comes home”

It was devotion, not only to country but also to each other.

And perhaps that’s why WWII romance still resonates. Love endured in a time when sacrifice was ordinary and courage was daily.

Here is a passage from the first chapter of Kathryn: Avenger Girls.

Being a bit of a tomboy myself, I relate to her a little too much.

***********

Lips all around her moved in slow motion, every smile painted in shades of Victory Red: bright, certain, impossibly composed. Sentences blurred into words, and words dissolved into a steady drone pressing against Kathryn Thomas’s ears until it was no longer conversation at all.

Just noise.

A humming, relentless sound, like bees swarming inside a hive.

The women laughed easily, their red mouths unwavering, as though patriotism and courage could be applied each morning along with powder and pin curls- a small, careful defense against ration books and headlines no one wanted to read too closely.

Kathryn slid her thumb over her bare bottom lip, the skin dry from rubbing it. The absence felt suddenly noticeable, like arriving unprepared for something everyone else understood.

She glanced once again at the clock on the mantel. The hands hadn’t moved. Of course, they hadn’t. Time didn’t pass in rooms like this. It only stretched, then stalled, before it trapped you.

She exhaled through her nose and lowered her gaze to her lap. She was still pinching a loose button between her fingers. It was the only thing keeping her from bolting out the front door. She held a threaded needle alongside the button like props, as proof she belonged here.

But she didn’t.

She’d been pretending to sew for nearly two hours. The thread still hadn’t found its way through the cloth. Not once.

Even though her hands were still, her mind was wandering. She could see the sunshine outside the window across the room, and from the way the limbs swayed on the redbud tree, a breeze must be blowing. Just thinking about feeling the warm sunshine on her face made her palms itch to be holding the handlebars of her motorcycle.

Every few seconds she bit the inside of her cheek, hard enough to sting, to bring herself back into the room with the button pinched between her fingers.

Eyes randomly flicked toward her, then away again, quick, and curious glances that felt like fingers tugging at her sleeves.

All around her, women leaned in, shoulders touching, with voices bright and easy. They stitched and chatted in effortless rhythm, laughter spilling like warm tea. Gossip stitched itself into the air as neatly as their thread: who was expecting, who was leaving, who had a boy overseas, who had a husband who drank too much and still expected dinner on the table.

They were her mother’s friends. Most likely she recruited them from the hair salon over town gossip or while trading coupons from their ration books.

Kathryn recognized a few by name heard over family dinner, but mostly they were strangers.

Still, they sweetly smiled and nodded to Kathryn as if she were simply another carefully curated artifact in her mother’s perfect world. Just another proper young lady who would eventually learn to smile and sip and nod at the right moments.

Kathryn had never felt the absence of not having any female friends. She had engines and repair manuals and quiet corners of her own. That had always been enough, at least in her mind. But. her mother treated it like a defect. Kathryn’s lack of female companionship was a flaw in the perfect design that needed to be corrected.

Hence, the weekly sewing social.

And now, here she was with the stiff chairs, the heavy perfume, the bright red mouths and the monotonous chatter, being held in place by one very small button.

Quiet misery stitched neatly into place, one endless minute at a time.