March 21 is now recognised as “Rosie the Riveter Day” in the United States, in commemoration of the symbolic character of World War II. Rosie depicted a generation of women who stepped up to take on industrial roles typically occupied by men, who were off at war.
Rosie’s character was first introduced in a popular song in 1942, after which, several women were identified as real-life representations, providing they had a similar name.
Among the top contenders, was Adeline Rose O’Malley from Wicheta, Kansas. She was a riveter in a local Boeing factory starting from January 1942. In the Wicheta Eagle’s 1943 publication, she is dubbed as the “Adeline” with brown hair and blue eyes, who was about five feet tall. Boeing workers knew her as Rosie the Riveter and would often serenade her with the song daily.
At that period, there were countless women like her, driving the sudden shift from housewives to aircraft manufacturers during the early 1940s. These women often worked for 12 hours every day, seven days a week, and managed to escalate production from 60 to 362 planes a month, thus contributing significantly to winning the war.
Of late, Boeing’s rivets were in the headlines again, but because of less commendable reasons. A door of one of the 737 Max planes took a tumble recently during a mid-flight, leading to 50 planes being temporarily grounded for repairs. Evidently, they are in need of more Rosies now.
The iconic representation of Rosie the Riveter was crafted by none other than Norman Rockwell, which graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29th, 1943. Although his muse wasn’t a Rosie, she was another Irish-American named Mary Louise Doyle from Vermont, later known as Mary Doyle Keefe after her marriage. Aged 19, she modelled for Rockwell’s pictures from which he painted, and her red hair and face were definitely reflected in the final artwork.
Her figure had undergone a metamorphosis to resemble an Amazonian woman with a well-built physique, displaying strong shoulders and the power of a bodybuilder. Leisurely eating a sandwich on her break, Rockwell’s Rosie is depicted with a heavy riveting gun casually resting on her lap as her right foot stomps on a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
This pose drew unlikely inspiration from Michelangelo’s depiction of Prophet Isaiah on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Rockwell, however, felt the necessity to apologize to his subject, who was a telephone operator off the canvas, for the exaggerated transformation he had painted her in. He admitted to his seeming violation, “To portray the image, I had to turn you into a type of giant.”
In a surprising twist, I discovered the existence of a Rosie the Riveter theme park situated in Richmond, California. Unfortunately, I completely missed it during my visit to the town last year as I was preoccupied with my pilgrimage to another Richmond highlight, the Internet Archive headquarters.
The Internet Archive, functioning like the Irish monks of the Dark Ages who preserved books meticulously, is a digital library with an expansive mission: to offer ‘universal access to all knowledge.’ It is an intriguing coincidence that the headquarters is set up in a former church, resembling the IA’s logo which is modelled after the ancient Library of Alexandria. As a daily columnist, I rely heavily on the Archive for providing a gateway to rare, extinct books, which I hadn’t even known of, that I can ‘borrow’ free of cost, complete with a word-search functionality.
Upon my visit there, I was pleasantly surprised by a host of terracotta sculptures, the work of a Dublin artist conveniently named Nuala Creed, given her spiritual sounding name.
Refocusing on Rosie, her contribution during the war revolutionised women’s perception towards work and served as a wake-up call for those anticipating a swift regression to the previous state of equilibrium.
Consequently, a different genre of propaganda surfaced during the 1940s, this time to remind these budding riveters of their status quo. This was illustrated in a newsreel lecture.
When peace eventually arrives, it holds no threats of unemployment for you ladies. Your roles in the workforce were vital, filling in the positions left vacant by the men in your lives, be they your spouses, brothers or children, who were called to serve. Upon the resolution of this war, these soldiers will reclaim their former occupations. Meanwhile, you, the resilient women and girls, will return to your familial roles as promised when you first stepped up to aid us in this battle.”
I discovered this in a 1982 publication, The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter: a narrative of three million working women in the World War II era, penned by Miriam Frank. And yes, it’s indeed accessible in the Internet Archive.
As a path to relief for a strained columnist, this type of archival work holds great value.
Whenever such moments occur, I find myself in a reflective state, akin to my traditional response when stepping into a church – an inward bow of respect.