Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Kane to Skipson, joined by staff Riyar Chamber, Heather,
Speaker 1: Candice Jane. What's your favorite icon? Um? Maybe Mr Clean. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a good choice. I'm partial to and I also
Speaker 1: like um the snuggle bear you know from Is It Downy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so. Advertisers have a way of hooking us
Speaker 1: and drawing us to their products, and even if we
Speaker 1: don't go out and buy the products, we still have
Speaker 1: an allegiance to them because they have this cute or
Speaker 1: quirky or tough character that we associate with it. That's true,
Speaker 1: and we were sort of convinced by the way they
Speaker 1: look the visual representation of it. It's very convincing. And
Speaker 1: that's the power of propaganda really, and propaganda, depending on
Speaker 1: how you look at it, can be a good or
Speaker 1: or a bad thing. Essentially, when propaganda convinces a bunch
Speaker 1: of people to act in a way that benefits you know,
Speaker 1: a nation or an organization, it has a pretty positive effect.
Speaker 1: But when propaganda convinces people to act out negatively or
Speaker 1: to act in ways that don't benefit mankind. That's when
Speaker 1: we say it's you know, it's bad propagandas right, And
Speaker 1: one of the most famous instances of I guess bad
Speaker 1: propaganda would be, uh, during the Nazi regime in Germany,
Speaker 1: Like they had this whole machine basically that produced propaganda
Speaker 1: to sway people over to the Nazi side, and various
Speaker 1: forms of propaganda, not just posters, but film and I
Speaker 1: think even music and even just I guess efforts. Really,
Speaker 1: if you could call efforts propaganda, I think that they
Speaker 1: made radios readily available so the people could hear broadcasts
Speaker 1: from Hitler and as far as the Americans go, during
Speaker 1: World War Two, if you ask anyone whether my ist
Speaker 1: famous propaganda icon is from that era, I bet you
Speaker 1: dollars to donuts that most people will say Rosie the
Speaker 1: Versie the Riveter. And ironically enough, yeah, the image of
Speaker 1: Versie the Riveter was produced during World War Two, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't popularized until the nineteen eighties. And I think
Speaker 1: that's where people really get the story of Rosie wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And the name Rosie was known during the
Speaker 1: war and it was associated with women, women taking up
Speaker 1: the man's role in the workplace. But it didn't. It
Speaker 1: didn't actually have the picture that we associate with it today,
Speaker 1: which was the we can do it lady with the
Speaker 1: polka dot scarf on her head and the defiant look
Speaker 1: in her eyes. Um. Rosie was known more so, um
Speaker 1: won by a song. A song was written about Rosie
Speaker 1: and uh that that was pretty popular, and I think
Speaker 1: it was forty two and uh then by forty three, um,
Speaker 1: the famous Norman Rockwell had had drawn his version of
Speaker 1: Rosie and that was the picture that was actually very
Speaker 1: famous during the war in America. Yeah, and as famous
Speaker 1: as Rockwell is and his images from the Saturday Evening Post.
Speaker 1: When I saw this image of Rosie the Riveter, I've
Speaker 1: never seen it before, and it kind of took me
Speaker 1: aback because I'm used to the iconic one with the
Speaker 1: other background and the very jaunty head scarf and the
Speaker 1: eyeliner and you know, very long eyelashes, very feminine Rosie
Speaker 1: and we'll get to her in a second. But Rockwell's
Speaker 1: Rosie is really really tough looking. Yeah. It's interesting. It's
Speaker 1: very different to look at the two next to each other,
Speaker 1: because like the Rosie, Rockwells Rosie is sort of she's
Speaker 1: a relaxed story to she's taking a break from her work.
Speaker 1: She has this lord, she has her tools on her,
Speaker 1: she has goggles and everything, and she's just eating her
Speaker 1: lunch on her break and and she's just sort of like, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 1: And we know it's Rosie because on her lunch pail
Speaker 1: it says Rosie and white letters. And Rockwell's paintings are
Speaker 1: infused with so much symbolism. And if you really steady
Speaker 1: this painting close so you can see all sorts of
Speaker 1: things that that Rockwell is trying to get across to us.
Speaker 1: For one, um, there's a flag in the background. She's
Speaker 1: wearing a red cross button. I think she's got a
Speaker 1: V for victory button. And she's seen in this very
Speaker 1: all American bologna sandwich. And my favorite part of the
Speaker 1: little clues inside is that she's standing on her for
Speaker 1: her foot is over um the famous bookmont comp of course,
Speaker 1: the autobiography of Adolf Hitler. So there you go that
Speaker 1: packs of powerful statement in and of itself. And you
Speaker 1: mentioned that she has tools in her lap, and we
Speaker 1: should mention one of the tools or the main tool,
Speaker 1: really is a riveting tool. So she is by all
Speaker 1: definitions and all purposes a riveter. And so we have
Speaker 1: this amalgamation of Americana and anti Nazi sentiment and femininity
Speaker 1: because she is still a woman, and even though she
Speaker 1: has muscles and she is you know and sort of
Speaker 1: I guess traditional male garb, she does exude a certain
Speaker 1: sense of femininity. Yeah, she's stills makeup on and she
Speaker 1: she sort of embodies both both sides, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the thing that really touched me, and I didn't
Speaker 1: see this connection on my own I I read about
Speaker 1: it was that her stance actually mimics that of the
Speaker 1: prophet Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel. Yeah, I read that too,
Speaker 1: and that really shocked me into I went and looked
Speaker 1: it up that that picture, and it really is strikingly similar.
Speaker 1: That rock Will must have taken it from that, and
Speaker 1: you get that sense that this image of Rosie, it's
Speaker 1: very much Steve in antiquity and a higher purpose of sorts,
Speaker 1: and he's almost making her an arc type, not just
Speaker 1: for women, but just you know, for for people. You know,
Speaker 1: this is what we should be during war time. We
Speaker 1: should be active and proactive citizens who are educated and
Speaker 1: patriotic and and doing what's right, And I guess the
Speaker 1: word do that brings us back to the other image
Speaker 1: of Rosie, the idea that Rosie was an empowering female
Speaker 1: figure who told everyone that we can do. That's how
Speaker 1: I think many of us look at her today, because
Speaker 1: I think that most of us would imagine this other
Speaker 1: polka dotted Rosie on color as opposed to the rackwell
Speaker 1: rose a. Yeah, and like I said, it's much more defiant.
Speaker 1: It like challenges the viewer to look at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that the history most of us know
Speaker 1: behind this particular image is that it was propaganda, maybe
Speaker 1: on behalf of the U. S. Government, maybe on behalf
Speaker 1: of the National ad Council, and it was designed to
Speaker 1: draw women into the workplace and motivate them to go
Speaker 1: fill these wartime factory or other jobs like postal worker
Speaker 1: jobs that had been vacated after the men had gone
Speaker 1: to the battlefront. And that's not the case, that's right,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's an easy assumption to make comparing it,
Speaker 1: especially to the Nazis of the time, like they were
Speaker 1: actually the government was producing this propaganda where that that
Speaker 1: wasn't the case for this this Rosie. She was actually
Speaker 1: to demestify her a little bit. Drawn by J. Howard Miller,
Speaker 1: and he didn't draw her of his own volition. He
Speaker 1: was employed by an advertising agency and he was doing
Speaker 1: this for Western as Electric Company. And the idea was
Speaker 1: that this was a poster that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: displayed for a very specific amount of time. Um, I
Speaker 1: think even on the bottom of the poster you can
Speaker 1: see in faint leonards it's just post from fed fifteen
Speaker 1: through twenty eight, so much time. No, it's it's not,
Speaker 1: But I guess it served its purpose. And there's a
Speaker 1: long history behind Westinghouse Electric in manufacturing company and their factories.
Speaker 1: They had many, many series of posters like this designed
Speaker 1: to motivate and energize their workers. They weren't drawing people
Speaker 1: into the workplace, they were trying to motivate those who
Speaker 1: were already there. And furthermore, even if this Rosie was
Speaker 1: trying to communicate a public message, it wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: public beyond the walls of Westinghouse because it's intended for
Speaker 1: private use only. So you can make the case that
Speaker 1: this isn't this isn't for recruitment at all. This this
Speaker 1: we can do it, Rosie, This was um. Uh what
Speaker 1: I read was it was it um Rosie the polka
Speaker 1: dotta Rosie could actually be away to um discourage sort
Speaker 1: of labor labor movements inside of these Westinghouse factories that
Speaker 1: they were sort of because communism was it was beginning
Speaker 1: to be a problem. And uh so um the company
Speaker 1: would would commission these these posters not to say, hey, women,
Speaker 1: you should take up your man's work, but but instead
Speaker 1: be like, do your job. And I think there were
Speaker 1: actually three specific goals that Westinghouse had in mind behind
Speaker 1: this pocad dot at Rosie and other posters and series
Speaker 1: similar to that, and that was too increase production, decrease absenteeism,
Speaker 1: and to keep strikes at bay. No one wanted that
Speaker 1: rising in the factories. And when we look at this Rosie,
Speaker 1: you know, like we sort of picked apart rockwells Rosie.
Speaker 1: The different symbols there. There weren't many symbols when it
Speaker 1: comes to PoCA dot at roseye to J. Howard Miller Rosie.
Speaker 1: But you can see she is a Westinghouse employee. She
Speaker 1: has the name tag on in the body of corner
Speaker 1: it says Westinghouse. And I think a lot of reproductions today.
Speaker 1: Jay Howard Miller's name has been cropped out, but clearly
Speaker 1: this was produced on behalf of Westinghouse. And she is very,
Speaker 1: very feminine, even more so compared to the Rockwell Rosie.
Speaker 1: You can clearly see in her hand that she's wearing
Speaker 1: a touch of neal polos. You can see the eyeliner,
Speaker 1: you can see her momscara, you can see the little
Speaker 1: curls of her hair underneath her head scarf. She's much
Speaker 1: more attractive than the Rockwell Rosie in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: She is, and if you look at other posters that J.
Speaker 1: Howard Miller designed, you can see that that's not uncommon.
Speaker 1: She's actually the most rough and tumble of all the
Speaker 1: women featured on Miller's posters. We see, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the World War two sentiment or women are like,
Speaker 1: you know, crying and maybe a caption was, you know,
Speaker 1: um wanting won't bring him home any stereotypical with the
Speaker 1: stereotypical woman who's wasting away at home waiting for a
Speaker 1: man to come back. The idea of being go ahead
Speaker 1: and get into the factory. We know that's not the
Speaker 1: case with Miller's Rosie, but we know, through and through
Speaker 1: she is a Westinghouse girl. And it's so funny because
Speaker 1: if you look at some of the photographs of other
Speaker 1: Westinghouse employees, or you read about Westinghouse history, you know
Speaker 1: that that upward thrust of the fest is characteristic of
Speaker 1: that company because they used to use it at meetings
Speaker 1: or rallies to motivate the workers. So while today we
Speaker 1: had a very feminist spent on what Rosie is saying,
Speaker 1: we can do with that upward thrust of the fest
Speaker 1: that would have been typical of men and women in
Speaker 1: Westinghouse factories during World War Two. And it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: also how this sort of flipped around, how like in
Speaker 1: during World War Two, this Rockwell Rosie was the more
Speaker 1: popular one, and how how this one came to be
Speaker 1: if it was only seen by you know, so many
Speaker 1: people working in those factories in those few months, um,
Speaker 1: those few weeks. Uh. And it's interesting because it all
Speaker 1: comes down to the fact that Rockwell's painting is actually copyrighted.
Speaker 1: It's a copyrighted image and so you know, um, you
Speaker 1: have to pay money to use it and or it's
Speaker 1: like a protected but um Miller's uh drawing actually didn't
Speaker 1: have any such protection, and so people could use it
Speaker 1: for whatever they want, and it fit into the the
Speaker 1: feminist um uh theory so well that it became so
Speaker 1: popular and actually um succeed like it's a superseded Rockwell's painting.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah. I think that today the National Archives
Speaker 1: say it's one of the top ten most requested images.
Speaker 1: And I think that as far as phonists go and
Speaker 1: the idea of correcting the misconceptions we have behind Rosie,
Speaker 1: this is a perfect demonstration, like we said, because she
Speaker 1: was representative of of the men and women in Westinghouse factories.
Speaker 1: That speaks volumes because other women who went to work
Speaker 1: not just as riveters, but in other fields of the
Speaker 1: manufacturing industry or even as postal workers. When the men
Speaker 1: came back from war, they were asked to leave their jobs.
Speaker 1: You know, this wasn't the huge floodgate opening of women
Speaker 1: shuffling into the workplace that we would like to think
Speaker 1: and hope that it was. I think, like, you did
Speaker 1: your job and now you know, go home. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: appreciate it, thanks a lot. We're done here. And I
Speaker 1: think to an extent it did open a floodgat of
Speaker 1: source because women saw that they were capable, that you know,
Speaker 1: they could do men's work. It wasn't as hard as
Speaker 1: they had imagined. They could still be feminine and still
Speaker 1: be women while they did it. But there was also
Speaker 1: a very early type of glass ceiling that we see too,
Speaker 1: because even though they were doing the same work that
Speaker 1: men had done before the war, they weren't getting paid
Speaker 1: as much. And there weren't as many women coming into
Speaker 1: the workplace from homes and the private sector as there
Speaker 1: were women who were already in the workplace, or minority women,
Speaker 1: un married women who were just getting into these manufacturing
Speaker 1: positions to get higher wages. That's what I was surprised at.
Speaker 1: You know, you we we buy into this myth that um,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, mothers started to start working at
Speaker 1: factories where like the fathers were in the family were
Speaker 1: and and that wasn't really the case. It was women
Speaker 1: who were not married housewives. They were just looking for,
Speaker 1: you know, a job to feed themselves, right, And that's
Speaker 1: an important detail to know. If you look at Rockwell's
Speaker 1: Rosie and Miller's Rosie and nine, there is wearing a
Speaker 1: wedding ring at any swords and uh one thing that
Speaker 1: also a slide thing about Rockwell's Rosie is that she's
Speaker 1: actually wearing loafers as opposed to what men of the
Speaker 1: time would be wearing, which would steel toed boots for
Speaker 1: a riveter, like you're doing this heavy work and you
Speaker 1: should have protected feet. And they actually didn't make uh
Speaker 1: these steel toed um women's shoes at the time until
Speaker 1: a little bit later, like towards the end of the war.
Speaker 1: And um, so it was actually very accurate and Rockwell
Speaker 1: to incorporate those brown loafers into Rosy. Yeah, they got
Speaker 1: all the details right. And it seems so ironic today
Speaker 1: that you can get this famous miller. We can do
Speaker 1: an image on everything from ovenmits, aprons to coffee cups.
Speaker 1: I mean things we may associate with a housewife, you know,
Speaker 1: an apron and an oven met, but it's an image
Speaker 1: that people are very fond of, you know, almost as
Speaker 1: fond as I am of you know, a little little
Speaker 1: snuggle bear. So um. Now, hopefully you know the real
Speaker 1: story of Rosie Riter and you won't make a mistake
Speaker 1: that many many people do about her. And if you
Speaker 1: want to learn even more about Rosie in World War
Speaker 1: two history and just women in general. Be sure to
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com. For more on this
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