Donuts for Victory!

I found this poster whilst browsing for an image to accompany a comment on Canada Day over at babble. It didn't suit my needs there, but, as I'm sure you'll agree, was just too good to waste.

And they laughed at the Communists

A whole month in which to celebrate deep-fried dough. Wow. I guess the populus was ready for any kind of diversion from the horrors and deprivations of war, but.... donuts? Maybe there's some kind of heavy metal-extracting qualities in fried cake rings that I've been unaware of until now; the deranged mental state of these two clearly needs immediate attention, so I can only guess that it was the government's intention to promote the satisfaction of donut consumption to those who could best relate to this image and were most in need of the hitherto unknown healing qualities of these sweet delights. I have to confess that I actually don't feel a great deal of kinship to this wild-eyed pair, so the campaign is somewhat lost on me, but given that 1945 was the seventeenth celebration of its kind I feel that I could be the one at fault here.

The girl is the more alarming of the two for mine. The way she's eyeing the morsel of donut on the fellow's lips is frankly distressing... or is that his jugular she's fixed on, helplessly hypnotised by thoughts the warm, fragrant skin there yielding to the tearing of her sharp little teeth? Coupled with the fact that she's a man in his forties dressed like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, it's all bringing Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? to mind. And as for him, the twelve-year-old in an Air Force uniform -- what the hell is he doing? Holding his donut fork by the tines? Preparing to puke? Piercing his tongue? Performing dental work? Trying to injure himself in a desperate attempt to get away from the hypno-eyed lunatic who's been stalking him at a 30 degree lean all afternoon? We may never know, but no doubt swingin' "Welcome Home" debauches like this made the hell at the front all worth it.

Coming up:
November -- "Root Vegetable Awareness" Month
December -- "Wallpaper and You" Month
January -- "Typewriter Ribbon -- the Forgotten Salad Vegetable" Month
February -- "Great Onions in History" Month
March -- "Uncle Sam Salutes Bathplugs" Month
April -- "Spiceracks and Livestock" Month

I guess this is just another signifier that the US really is a foreign country; that the contemporary popularity of donuts there had its origins in images like this tells me more clearly than most things that it's a culture that I will simply never be a part of.