[GoLinda]

I am just getting ready to finish my Masters thesis and was wondering if there was a way to contact Jessica.

I really am fascinated with her story, being an ex army girl myself. I would like to know what she might think of what wrote before I look to publish it.

What I am interested in is how her story gets used. So few academics have even bothered to treat her a real person. Or if there is someone out there who has the same interests as I do.

[Dilligafst]

Pray tell, what can be so academic about Jessica or her story, outside of the sociological part of how it was inflated and used as an age-old hero worship type story to drum up support for the war? The worst part about it is the deliberate attempt to make her a Jane Wayne type hero really ignored the hero she really is.

[GoLinda]

Her story is quite interesting because it really shows how women's participation in the military has changed over time. 20 years ago for good or bad, the media would never have portrayed her as you say Jane Wayne. And even more important for academics is that Jessica had the strength to reject the messages that attempted to make her into something she is not. What I admire is her strength to stand against the military industrial complex. Something WACS and WAVES were not able to do.

I think many academics have tried to jump on the bandwagon to criticize the Bush administration and have paid little attention to how Jessica actually tells her story. Which to me is the more important issue

[Dilligafst]

You're probably right about twenty years ago and how the media would have treated Jessica. Or in the WWII generation where they were basically scoffed at, derided, and told to go home to the kitchens and whatever else. What is interesting is the current media's reaction (much of the media is either owned or supported by giant corporations that are making billions off of the Iraqi thing) to Jessica and how she has told her story -- the almost anti-hero actually being far more of the hero than their myth making wanted her to be or gave her credit for to suit their purposes. That is worth an academic study in itself.