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Yesterday at the air museum, Amanda Goodheart-Parks, our Education Director, gave a talk on the background and interpretations of the WW2 "We Can Do It" poster. For most of my life, I'd seen the poster referred to as "Rosie the Riveter".
Note that the poster makes no reference to "Rosie the Riveter".
The poster itself was used only for a few weeks, back in 1943, just one of a series of internal posters to raise morale - and keep up production - in Westinghouse Electric plants. It was then filed away and pretty much forgotten. The poster wasn't well known by the general public until many years later, especially after it appeared in a Washington Post Magazine article in 1982 on war propaganda materials in the National Archives, then printed later on the cover of Smithsonian Magazine in 1994.
But in 1942, a year before the Westinghouse poster first appeared, a popular song by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb hit the airwaves. "Rosie the Riveter" described how women were taking the "tough" jobs men had done, so the men could head off to war.
https://youtu.be/55NCElsbjeQ
The song, and similar "women at work" songs, began spreading across the UK, Canada, and USA. Norman Rockwell created a large-format painting, used as cover for The Saturday Evening Post in November 1943
Note how Rockwell uses the name Rosie, and shows her trampling on a copy of Mein Kampf. To add a religious connection, he imitated the pose of Michelangelo's "Isaiah".
Lots more to the story, but you know me. I talk too much.
https://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=3350
We are very fortunate to have a strong education program, and Amanda at its head.
Tom M.
New England Air Museum
www.neam.org
Note that the poster makes no reference to "Rosie the Riveter".
The poster itself was used only for a few weeks, back in 1943, just one of a series of internal posters to raise morale - and keep up production - in Westinghouse Electric plants. It was then filed away and pretty much forgotten. The poster wasn't well known by the general public until many years later, especially after it appeared in a Washington Post Magazine article in 1982 on war propaganda materials in the National Archives, then printed later on the cover of Smithsonian Magazine in 1994.
But in 1942, a year before the Westinghouse poster first appeared, a popular song by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb hit the airwaves. "Rosie the Riveter" described how women were taking the "tough" jobs men had done, so the men could head off to war.
https://youtu.be/55NCElsbjeQ
The song, and similar "women at work" songs, began spreading across the UK, Canada, and USA. Norman Rockwell created a large-format painting, used as cover for The Saturday Evening Post in November 1943
Note how Rockwell uses the name Rosie, and shows her trampling on a copy of Mein Kampf. To add a religious connection, he imitated the pose of Michelangelo's "Isaiah".
Lots more to the story, but you know me. I talk too much.
https://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=3350
We are very fortunate to have a strong education program, and Amanda at its head.
Tom M.
New England Air Museum
www.neam.org