---
title: Keep Mum - She's Not So Dumb! - Careless Talk Costs Lives
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-keep-mum-shes-not-so-dumb-careless-talk-1939/
description: A glamorous blonde woman leans toward an RAF sergeant air gunner, her hand on his arm, above the line 'Keep mum - she's not so dumb!'.
section: Collection
---

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3. Keep Mum - She's Not So Dumb! - Careless Talk Costs Lives

**Content note:** British wartime poster using a gendered stereotype of a woman as a security risk, as issued. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

[![Keep Mum - She's Not So Dumb! - Careless Talk Costs Lives, 1939 UK poster: A glamorous blonde woman leans toward an RAF](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/uk-keep-mum-shes-not-so-dumb-careless-talk-1939.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/uk-keep-mum-shes-not-so-dumb-careless-talk-1939.jpg)

# Keep Mum - She's Not So Dumb! - Careless Talk Costs Lives

A glamorous blonde woman leans toward an RAF sergeant air gunner, her hand on his arm, above the line 'Keep mum - she's not so dumb!'. The poster stages a friendly conversation as a security threat (fear-appeal) and relies on the stereotype of a charming woman as a likely leak; nothing in the picture shows her actually passing information.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
Keep mum —
she's not
so dumb!

CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES

[signature:] A.S.
PRINTED FOR H.M. STATIONERY OFFICE BY LOWE & BRYDONE PRINTERS LTD., N.W.10. 51-101
```

[← Keep It Up: Save and Lend Through the Post Office Savings Bank and Trustee Savings Banks](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-keep-it-up-save-and-lend-post-office-savings-bank-1939/) [Keep the Wheels Turning! Repair Work is Vital to the War Effort →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-keep-the-wheels-turning-newbould-1939/)

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- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
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- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
- [Brolej Žemajčiaj! (Brothers Samogitians!): hand-painted broken-cross poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/brolej-zemajciaj-broken-cross-1862/) (Russian Empire · 1862 · Fear appeal, Transfer)