I recently came across a new reading of the famous, romantically iconic kissing sailor photo from the 1940s -- when the WWII sailor celebrated the surrender of Japan on V-J Day in 1945 by dipping and passionately kissing a nurse that most (probably) assume is his girlfriend.
Recently, an interview with both figures in the photo brought interesting and disturbing facts to light: Sailor George Mendosa was drunk. Nurse Greta Friedman didn't know him. He just grabbed her and kissed her...while the woman he was on a date with (and eventually married) stands nearby.
The Feministing blog takes the story a bit further than some of the news stories, analyzing the woman’s body language in the photo and agreeing with another blogger that the image “unambiguously depicts an act of sexual assault,” noting the woman’s limp figure and clenched fist. “I did not see him approaching, and before I know it, I was in this vice grip,” said Greta Friedman to CBS News. It’s a disappointing but plausible assessment of the iconic image, given that both the story of the sailor and the nurse corroborate that the kiss was unplanned and unasked for.
Or did they? What's perhaps most interesting is all this must be taken with a grain of salt. A 2007 New York Times article says there were many possible kissers. A 2010 Huffington Post article said the female in the photo died in 2010. This new information comes from a book called The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo that Ended World War II (what a title), which perhaps makes a good case for Greta and George being the actual photography subjects.
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