Norman Rockwell's Influence On Women

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The woman in a pair of overalls, riveting gun and lunch box in her lap, having biceps the size of cannons, but still has blush and women’s shoes, not to mention her stepping on a copy of the Mein Kampf became and image seen all over she was the face of change. Not only was Norman Rockwell’s painting the image of women in the factories, but also many posters were hung saying it is your American duty to go to work instead of staying home. Posters saying, “We can do it” and “There is work to be done and a war to be won… NOW” The war starts and thousands of men leave to go fight on the front lines, leaving many jobs open with no one to fill them. The factories had to be changed to wartime production because things needed for the war. Who are supposed …show more content…

When the song came out Norman Rockwell undoubtedly had heard the song, when he painted his Rosie the Riveter that was plastered on every Saturday Evening Post on May 29th 1943, which was Memorial Day that year. Some sources say that Rockwell painted a nineteen-year-old telephone operator Geraldine Hoff, while others say he painted a dental hygienist, Mary Keefe. There was also J. Howard Miller’s painting which is the one most people are more familiar with. Even tough women in the workforce were extremely crucial to the war effort, women rarely earned fifty percent of male wages (History). All the war propagandas urged women to get jobs, saying it was a patriotic duty. There was never any real Rosie, but after the song and the posters the media found any woman that was working and had the name Rose or Rosie and plastered their faces everywhere. One in every four married women that weren’t working before the war was working in 1943 (History). This goes to show the need for women during the war, it also goes to show how much we relied on men before the war, not one factory or defense industry had a women working on the assembly

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