{"id":12233,"date":"2018-05-25T05:41:22","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T05:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=12233"},"modified":"2018-05-26T05:49:06","modified_gmt":"2018-05-26T05:49:06","slug":"how-one-rosie-the-riveter-poster-won-out-over-all-the-others-and-became-a-symbol-of-female-empowerment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-one-rosie-the-riveter-poster-won-out-over-all-the-others-and-became-a-symbol-of-female-empowerment\/","title":{"rendered":"How one ‘Rosie the Riveter’ poster won out over all the others and became a symbol of female empowerment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarah Myers<\/a>, Saint Francis University<\/a><\/em> and G. Kurt Piehler<\/a>, Florida State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Seventy-five years ago, Norman Rockwell\u2019s painting of Rosie the Riveter appeared on the cover of a May 1943 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. <\/p>\n

Many might have been already aware of the fictional Rosie from the radio. A year earlier, she made her first appearance in a nationally broadcast song<\/a>. Now she was appearing on newsstands and millions of doorsteps across the country.<\/p>\n

Yet today, when people hear \u201cRosie the Riveter,\u201d Rockwell\u2019s painting isn\u2019t the one that comes to mind.<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s J. Howard Miller\u2019s depiction of Rosie \u2013 flexing, wearing a red bandana, accompanied by the words \u201cWe Can Do It!\u201d \u2013 that we associate with the World War II cultural icon.<\/p>\n

Beyonc\u00e9 has posted it on Instagram<\/a>, Hillary Clinton used it in her presidential<\/a> campaigns<\/a> and a host of consumer goods, from coffee mugs to magnets, are plastered with Miller\u2019s version of Rosie. All use it to send a message of female empowerment.<\/p>\n

But out of the many iterations of Rosie the Riveter, some may be surprised to learn that Miller\u2019s \u201cWe Can Do It!\u201d poster was, for a time, one of the least popular. The poster was displayed in Westinghouse factories for only a two-week period<\/a>, and few Americans ever saw it during the war years. <\/p>\n

Why were other versions of Rosie the Riveter more popular during the war? And how did this version end up becoming the Rosie we picture today? <\/p>\n

Today, the now-famous image of Rosie the Riveter might evoke the heroic way women during World War II assumed jobs traditionally held by men \u2013 factory workers, taxi drivers and even soldiers \u2013 to help with the war effort. <\/p>\n

But during the war years, there was actually a fair amount of ambivalence about women entering the workforce, especially if they had young children. Efforts to provide adequate day care for women were met with considerable opposition<\/a>. And the male workers who remained on the home front were resistant to the idea of having women work<\/a> as welders, riveters and construction workers, fearing the feminization of these professions and decreasing wages.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n The cover of the sheet music for the 1942 Rosie the Riveter tune.<\/span>
\n Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Due to these concerns about fluctuating gender roles, much wartime propaganda would portray women<\/a> who ended up assuming nontraditional roles in the workforce as attractive<\/a>, white, feminine<\/a> and middle-class<\/a> workers.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n A U.S. Employment Service recruitment poster featuring a woman.<\/span>
\n Library of Congress<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The propaganda was also quick to depict their work as temporary \u2013 something that would last just for the duration of the war. In many of these posters, you can easily imagine the women returning to their roles as homemakers once the war was over. <\/p>\n

The most well-known wartime image of Rosie the Riveter became Norman Rockwell\u2019s painting<\/a> for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, which depicted a muscular riveter casually desecrating \u201cMein Kampf.\u201d <\/p>\n

It certainly reflects the remarkable contribution of women to the war effort. She\u2019s also more masculine than much of the wartime propaganda featuring women \u2013 something that undoubtedly inflamed American anxieties about gender roles. At the same time, her femininity is still present with her red lipstick and womanly figure.<\/p>\n

Of course, once the war concluded, women were forced out of these roles, and Rosie was largely forgotten during the baby boom years from 1946 to 1964.<\/p>\n

But by the early 1980s, feminists were looking for images from the past<\/a> that they could reclaim as a symbol of female empowerment. They may have considered the Rockwell painting. But unlike Rockwell\u2019s work, the less-famous Westinghouse poster wasn\u2019t under copyright. It also didn\u2019t contain a veiled reference to the war: \u201cMein Kampf.\u201d <\/p>\n

In the post-Vietnam era, feminists wanted an image of a woman that was visually appealing but not necessarily pro-war. In addition, compared with Rockwell\u2019s painting, the woman in Miller\u2019s poster is not as overtly working-class and could easily be manipulated to support a wide range of activist causes.<\/p>\n

In the end, the message feminists wanted to send with the image wasn\u2019t the original message of the poster. Miller\u2019s poster, like most of the Rosie propaganda, was supposed to be a call for men and women to work together for the duration of the war out of patriotic duty. <\/p>\n

But because they were still grappling with widespread job and wage discrimination<\/a>, feminists simply wanted to use Rosie to show that women could perform the jobs traditionally held by men just as well, if not better. The slogan \u201cWe Can Do It!\u201d was originally about winning the war. But it\u2019s now meant to suggest women can do anything they put their minds to.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe red bandana-wearing Rosie was feminine-looking and attractive, bold but not too confrontational. In other words, the image was a safe, malleable advocate, one that continues to be deployed today.<\/p>\n

Sarah Myers<\/a>, Assistant Professor of History, Saint Francis University<\/a><\/em> and G. Kurt Piehler<\/a>, Associate Professor of History, Florida State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Myers, Saint Francis University and G. Kurt Piehler, Florida State University Seventy-five years ago, Norman Rockwell\u2019s painting of Rosie the Riveter appeared on the cover of a May 1943 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Many might have been already aware of the fictional Rosie from the radio. A year earlier, she made her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[1180,2474,1827,4543,185,4542,1823],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12235,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12233\/revisions\/12235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}