Rosie the Riveter

The character Rosie the Riveter, like GI Joe, was created during World War II and had life in many genres. Rosie originally represented women who held traditionally male jobs in American defense industries for the duration of the war. As songwriters, journalists, artists, filmmakers, scholars, and reformers constructed their own renditions of Rosie, she gained iconic status. By the turn of the 21st century, scholarly and popular publications, documentary films, Websites, and permanent museum exhibits honored her history and the actual women wage earners she represented. Like other iconic images, Rosie has taken on different meanings over time. Not only does she represent the female defense-industry worker but any woman who performed a “man's” job during the war. More broadly, she has become a symbol of women's perennial struggle for autonomy and personal freedom throughout the world.

Rosie the Riveter appeared in four different genres from 1942 to 1944: on a poster to boost war production, in a popular song, in a government film to sell war bonds, and on a magazine cover. The precise chronology of their production is unclear. The fictive image from the 1940s that the U.S. public most associates with Rosie the Riveter was created in 1942 by J. Howard Miller for the Westinghouse War Production Co-Ordinating Committee, part of the U.S. government's wartime effort to promote cooperation between labor and management. Initially Miller's image of a blue-collar female worker bore no association with a riveter or a woman named Rosie. The connection between Miller's image and the fictive character Rosie the Riveter developed soon after.

Miller's simple but arresting image succeeded admirably in communicating the message of a worker's dedication to war production. Set against a golden yellow background, the woman figure wears work clothing with the colors of the U.S. flag. Attired in a dark blue work shirt, with a red and white polka dot bandana on her head, Miller's female worker rolls up her right sleeve and flexes her muscular bicep to demonstrate her determination to produce whatever was necessary to win the war. She proudly proclaims in a cartoon-like format, “We Can Do It!” By omitting any references to specific jobs, Miller created an Everywoman of physical strength and emotional resolve to inspire wage earners everywhere to deliver uninterrupted wartime production. Of all the government-sponsored wartime fictive images of women, Miller's has become the most familiar. Not only has the poster image been reproduced in different sizes and print formats, but it can be found on coffee mugs, T-shirts, tote bags, and refrigerator magnets. The image and slogan have been associated with causes other than World War II.

Miller's Everywoman probably became associated with the imaginary character Rosie the Riveter after the successful publication and broadcast of a popular song by that name, released by the Paramount Music Corporation in February 1943. Rosalind P. Walter, a Long Island philanthropist who worked on an assembly line in an aircraft factory, inspired the song. In their original 1942 musical composition, writers Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb created a five-stanza song immortalizing Rosie, a well-to-do young woman who gave up “sipping dry martinis” and “munching caviar” at upscale cocktail bars to work selflessly as a riveter in industry. Rosie's patriotic service, the song proclaimed, complemented her boyfriend's military service in the Marine Corps; together, the song says, they were an unbeatable team. Before the song was recorded, Paramount eliminated the stanza about martinis, transforming Rosie from a upper-class socialite to an average citizen, probably to heighten the song's popular appeal. Paramount chose Kay Kyser, a zany showman and radio performer, to record the song, and he played it on his popular radio program.

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