On International Workers' Day last year we celebrated a working icon, "Rosie the Riveter", with a post about the illustration created by Norman Rockwell for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on Memorial Day, May 29, 1943.
In the illustration red-haired Rosie in denim overalls is sitting down with a sandwich in her left hand; her riveting gun rests on her lap, while a giant American flag waves behind her, and her foot is firmly resting on the cover of Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Rockwell was probably influenced by the pop song "Rosie the Riveter", released in early 1943 by The Four Vagabonds, written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb and produced by Paramount Music Corporation of New York, that's why in the illustration there is written "Rosie" on the worker's lunch pail.
As mentioned in that post, the illustration was loosely based on 19-year-old Mary Doyle Keefe. As you may have heard, Keefe died recently (on April 21, 2015) in Simsbury, Connecticut, after a brief illness. She was 92.
Keefe met Rockwell while growing up in Arlington, Vermont. She actually never riveted, but worked as a telephone operator.
For two days Keefe posed for Rockwell and his photographer, Gene Pelham, on whose pictures the illustrators often based his work. On the second day she was asked to wear a blue shirt and penny loafers, but it looks like only the latter ended up being faithfully reproduced by Rockwell.
The illustrator ended up changing quite a few things, starting with his model: Keefe was indeed small and petite, but Rosie had muscular arms and hands and quite big shoulders. Rockwell wanted Rosie to show indeed strength and modeled her body on Michelangelo's Isaiah as portrayed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Twenty-four years after she posed, Rockwell sent Keefe a letter apologising for the muscular rendition of her body in the picture, but the point was making her look gigantic and empowered.
Keefe as Rosie became a symbol, representing all the American women who went to work on the home front during World War II.
There was actually another "Rosie" who recently died: Alice Marie (nee Ziegler) Inglis (see small pictures in this post, on the right).
Born in 1920 in Elmira, Ontario, Marie was employed by the Otis Arms manufacturer in Hamilton during WWII. She died on March 19th, 2015.
Some of the stories of these working women are preserved in institutions such as the Rosie the Riveter World War II / Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California.
On its page it's possible to find inspiring images and also employee ID cards of the original "Rosies" and discover in this way their jobs and lives.
Barbara Pasco Vickers worked for example the graveyard shift at Boeing Aircraft in Seattle, Washington; Sophie Alvarez Reid was a welder in the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, and several members of Sophie's family, including her sister Lupe and brother-in-law Antonio, also worked in the yards.
Norma Jensen and her mother Thelma lived instead in San Francisco, but worked in Richmond: they would start commuting at 5:00a.m. taking a cable car, the ferry, and a bus to get to the Kaiser Shipyards.
These workers were considered symbols of women's active and essential contribution to the war effort and led the path of women's progress in the States.
In our times of social unrest, unemployment and persistent income inequality (it is worth remembering that during remarks to the general audience last Wednesday, Pope Francis addressed the wage gap asking people: "Why should it be taken for granted that women must earn less than men? The disparity is pure scandal."), these women have a "Rosie effect", they are very inspiring and assume a new meaning and role for younger generations. In the same way, Rockwell's illustration with its giant and empowered worker posing defiantly, prompts us all to look at the future and embrace its challenges and opportunities.
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