Image from the National Park Service Cover Art for The Song Rosie the Riveter, December 1942

At the end of 1942, Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb wrote the song “Rosie the Riveter” for the band The Four Vagabonds. The song was officially released to the public and gained radio play in early 1943, making it the first national appearance of the character of Rosie the Riveter. An early introduction to the song stated: “While other girls are tendin’ to the cocktail bar, sipping dry martinis, munching caviar, there’s a girl who’s really, putting them to shame- Rosie….Rosie is her name.” The song sent the message to Americans that femininity has a greater purpose than sophistication or grace: contribution. The song is not as popular today, though it more accurately demonstrates the tenets of the genuine experience of female defense workers.  The song goes on to describe Rosie’s adjectives that would later be used in the famous posters; Rosie was hardworking, loyal, and patriotic. Most of all, she was an invaluable part of the war: “She’s a part of the assembly line…she’s making history, working for victory.” This line combined with the phrase, “keeps a sharp lookout for sabotage” demonstrates a need in society to convince men to trust women in the workforce, as it paints Rosie as incredibly loyal. 

The tone of the song, and the lyrics in which Rosie is presented as the ideal and admired woman, encouraged women to join the war effort. They depict the progress a single woman could make toward the goal of winning the war to entice women to join in defense work. However, the song misattributed the success of a large group of women to a single character. The line “when they gave her a production E, she was as proud as a girl could be” assumes that a woman would be recognized for her individual contributions to the war effort. In reality, a production “E” award was given to an entire factory for their superior level of defense production during the war. It was a single award that was incredibly prestigious, as only 5% of all eligible factories received the award. The sentiments accompanied with the award, regardless of a lack of individual glory, were in fact true for one factory worker. Dr. Josephine Von Miklos described the ceremony in which her factory received their production E in this way:

I felt that this plant was a part of the arsenal of democracy…as one of 10,000 workers who were to be awarded the army and Navy E. I had a funny feeling inside of me; this was a big moment. This was, maybe, in a way, the biggest moment of my life…There were a few big moments like that in everybody's life. But maybe this one was so very big because there was nothing personal about it. I was able to wear the Army and Navy E pin on my lapel. 

From its origin in the song preformed by The Four Vagabonds, the Rosie the Riveter archetype set expectations for the ideal female defense worker that thousands of women would surpass during the war. The song and subsequent material culture simplified these women’s contributions, as many popular culture characterizations tend to do. The United States needed these women to become more independent, but such feminist ideas became inconvenient after the war. 

The most famous piece of Rosie the Riveter in popular culture today was in fact the least popular during American involvement of World War II. While it is impossible to separate the modern day connotations of feminism from the image today, the poster was not widely distributed during the 1940s. In fact, as can be seen in the bottom left hand corner of the poster, it was only set to circulate for two weeks within the Westinghouse Electric Company. The poster was not used to recruit women to factory work, but instead was intended to inspire those already involved to work harder by showing up to work on time, taking on extra hours, and producing war material at a faster rate. The now famous poster was, at its heart, a propaganda image intended keep female employees at the Westinghouse plant working diligently. It was an inaccurate portrayal of a female defense worker, as real-life Rosie, Dr. Josephine Von Miklos stated that women wearing make-up or nail polish “didn’t work long.”

Certainly, there were risks to depicting the hard work that women contributed to the war effort as a fantasy. Days were hard, skin and limbs were lost, and factory accidents were more frequent than combat injuries per capita, especially early on in American involvement. Constance Bowman Reid explained in her factory diary that “There’s many a Liberator in the air today with bits of my flesh clinging to its seventh bulkhead.” The Miller image was intended to frame female involvement in the war effort as infinitely positive. During the war, there is evidence to support that the poster was only displayed in a single workroom of a single factory, and only remained visible for two short weeks. The poster had a print run of less than one thousand copies. While it may have inspired women already in the thick of defense work, there is no evidence that it mobilized women across the country to enter war production plants. 

The Miller print displayed at the Westinghouse Electric Plant was not popularized during the war, but became popular in the 1980s during the feminist movement.  While historian James Kimble claimed that “the image’s current status as the ultimate pop-culture icon is built on numerous historical misconceptions,” his analysis attempts to isolate the influence of a single image of Rosie the Riveter. The influence of “Rosie” on historical memory is the culmination of both posters, the song, the film, and the thousands of images created in the decades following the war. While the Westinghouse/Miller Rosie may not have been accurate, its later popularity assisted in building the historical memory of Rosie that is intangible and cannot be understated. 

Norman Rockwell Image Featured May 29, 1943.

The most famous image of Rosie at the time was the Norman Rockwell image, which was featured as the cover for the Saturday Evening Post magazine. In this image, Rosie appears more masculine, particularly in opposition to the Miller image which displays painted fingernails on the figure. This image appears to represent a more realistic view of factory work. One Rosie, Constance Bowman Reid reported that she and her friend Constance Marie couldn’t even afford soap at the time and were frequently mocked in the clinic for their dirty hands. This poster also contains the name Rosie, while the Miller image does not contain such a label. Rosie is seen stomping on a copy of Mein Kampf, and thus is politically engaged and willing to state her opinion in public. Joining the war effort in of itself was a political action. Unlike the Miller image, which has been made more popular, Rosie doesn’t appear hypersexualized in the Rockwell version. This version of Rosie does not have time for lipstick, but instead depicts a woman who had been working hard in a factory and left work dirty. 

The Rockwell image maintains the concept that Rosie is above all else loyal and hardworking.  Just as in the song before it, Rosie is not depicted as married. Instead, she displays an almost nun-like commitment to the war and her country. The Rockwell Rosie does not attempt to be pleasing to a man, but to be impressive and striking to a woman. The muscles and effort displayed by a woman in the image demonstrated that the war offered opportunities vastly different from previous generations. 

The Rosie the Riveter film was a comedy intended to increase the sale of war bonds and normalize young women in factory work. Much of the movie is relatively unrelated to the archetype of Rosie, though the film contributed to the myth of Rosie the Riveter in several ways. Just like the song and the posters before it, Rosie was depicted as an unmarried woman. While this image of a female factory worker was certainly the ideal at the start of U.S. involvement in World War II, by 1944 the female workforce included tens of thousands of married women. National Park Ranger Betty Reid Soskin explained this progression in an interview, stating:

And if you knew the sequence by which people were hired — first to be hired were the men who were too old to fight; second, the boys who were too young to be drafted; third, single white women; and when that pool was exhausted, married white women. And not until 1943, the first black men were hired, as helpers and trainees only, to do the heavy lifting for the women they brought on board. And while there were some black women who worked as laborers, sweeping the decks while other people worked, it wasn’t until late in 1944, early in 1945, that black women began to be trained as welders.

By 1944, the defense industry was diverse in a number of ways, though the archetype of Rosie the Riveter remained narrow in scope. When the character of Rosie in the film is asked why she has yet to marry her fiancée, she replies: “Oh I don't know, things are so unsettled now and well besides I think every girl should do what she can to help win this war.” The second part of this clause implies that marriage would get in the way of Rosie’s patriotic contributions, as if women were incapable of demonstrating full loyalty to multiple commitments. The phrase “a girl should do what she can to help win this war” appears more than once in the film, further driving home the narrative that a woman’s life should be paused during the war. While much of the public messaging seemed to suggest that marriage prospects should be put on hold, the reality was that American marriages in 1942 had increased by 82% compared to 1932. The war provided frequent reminders of mortality but did not dissuade American men and women from marrying in the way that the Great Depression had.

The film and its theatrical poster paint the picture that the circumstances of war were quaint or even fun for a woman on the home front. Nothing could be further from the truth, as these depictions greatly contrast the sexual harassment, accidents, and tumultuous days female factory workers endured. 

A Comparison to the Reality...

Citations

Sheridan Harvey, “Rosie the Riveter Transcript: Real Women Workers in World War II,” Journeys & Crossings, The Library of Congress, July 20, 2010. Transcript of Video Presentation, https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/journey/rosie-transcript.html.

[1]

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid.

[1] “Army-Navy E AWARD,” Naval History and Heritage Command, September 16, 2020, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/a/army-navy-e-award.html.

[1] Ibid.

[1] Von Miklos, 172.

[1] “Army-Navy E AWARD.”

[1] Rosie the Riveter, directed by Joseph Santley.

[1] Ibid.

[1] J. Howard Miller, “We Can Do It!” 1943, Poster produced for Westinghouse, Courtesy of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_538122.

[1] James J. Kimble and Lester C. Olson, "Visual Rhetoric Representing Rosie the Riveter: Myth and Misconception in J. Howard Miller's "We Can Do It!" Poster." Rhetoric and Public Affairs 9, no. 4 (2006): 533-69. Accessed July 11, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41940102, 536.

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid.

[1] Von Miklos, 186.

[1] Jennings, “The Human Machinery of War.”

Reid, Slacks & Calluses, 138.  

[1] Reid, 137.

[1] Kimble., 536.

[1] Ibid., 547.

[1] Ibid., 561.

[1] Norman Rockwell, “Rosie the Riveter- 1943,” 1943, Norman Rockwell Museum: Saturday Evening Post, https://www.nrm.org/rosie-the-riveter/#.

[1] Harvey, “Rosie the Riveter Transcript: Real Women Workers in World War II.”

[1] Reid, 65.

[1] Rosie the Riveter, directed by Joseph Santley.

[1] Ibid.

[1] “How the Rosie the Riveter Era Changed America: an African-American Woman's Story,” Whose Century Is It? (PRX: The World, March 24, 2016), https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-03-24/how-rosie-riveter-era-changed-america-african-american-womans-story.

[1] Rosie the Riveter, directed by Joseph Santley.

[1] Emily Yellin, “Lining Up for Wartime Weddings,” The New York Times, February 2, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/weddings/165-years-of-wedding-announcements/world-war-two-weddings.