Women’s Liberation Is Gonna Get Your Mama and Your Sister and Your Girlfriend, 1971

This artwork was created in 1971 by the San Francisco-based group Celestial Arts. The poster was meant to parody James McNeill Whistler’s “Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1” The seated figure from McNeill’s artwork appears in Celestial Arts’ piece holding a machine gun- outlined in magenta. The text “is gonna get your mama and your sister and your girlfriend” is done in ink-splattered text. The piece is offset printed in magenta and black on white stock. “Women’s Liberation Is Gonna Get Your Mama and Your Sister and Your Girlfriend” was a propaganda piece to encourage the Women’s Liberation movement and scare those who opposed the movement. The poster was intended to be a rallying cry for women across the United States. 

Women’s Liberation Is Gonna Get Your Mama and Your Sister and Your Girlfriend, 1971, works very effectively as a propaganda poster because of the bright, saturated magenta used to color the subject and her machine gun- the colors draw attention to the piece. Women’s Liberation Is Gonna Get Your Mama and Your Sister and Your Girlfriend, 1971, appears in Dr. Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy’s collection titled “Insist, Persist, Resist: An Invitation to Action for Women’s Liberation. Dr Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy is one of the founders of the field of women’s studies and a pioneering force representing feminist and lesbian studies and social anthropology in the United States. Lapovsky Kennedy’s collection consists of several feminist posters she collected for decades, before donating them to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Women’s Liberation Is Gonna Get Your Mama and Your Sister and Your Girlfriend, 1971, along with the other posters in Lapovsky Kennedy’s collection, address themes of reproductive freedom, sexual assault, pay equity, LGBTQ+ liberation, and other hot-button issues. Dr Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy adds that she “saved a poster primarily because it energized and inspired my passion for justice through its message, or design, or through the memories of the event it is announcing. In short, I wanted it near me.”

I discovered this poster and the rest of Dr. Lapovsky Kennedy’s collection on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art website, linked here: https://www.sfmoma.org/theme/elizabeth-lapovsky-kennedy-womens-liberation-feminist-posters/