Imagine being loved and celebrated for being someone you’re notMs. Doyle was not a Rosie the Riveter. She worked at Westinghouse, and her iconic image was created by an artist hired by the company for an in-house campaign to increase employee productivity. At Westinghouse, I don’t know if there was even any riveting done; more likely Ms. Doyle would have been soldering.
The actual Rosie the Riveter picture was by Norman Rockwell, depicting a massively muscular woman with her sleeves rolled up to show bulging he-man biceps, holding a riveting gun. Somehow, even though this Rosie is an image of real, physical female power, somebody you’d want on your side in a bar fight, she hasn’t turned out to be very popular. Maybe it’s just that Americans prefer their women all petite and feminine-like. The real Rosie was, dare I say it, kind of trans-genderish/genderqueer/gender-bender.
Ms. Doyle proved to be the winning combination: defiant, strong attitude that also screams Female Power-but physically still feminine and with totally girly little biceps.

The real storyhttp://www.metafilter.com/4640…
Correction: Doyle didn’t work at Westinghouse. She had worked at another factory for 1 week, pressing metal (i.e. operating a metal pressing machine, not lifting barbells). The artist working on the Westinghouse productivity campaign saw a newswire photo of her and copied it for the poster. Doyle didn’t even know her photo had inspired a poster until she read about it in 1984.
But in this world, image trumps reality every time. So give credit where it’s due: Doyle gave us the greatest badass feminist image of all time. That has been of incalculable worth. When you achieve that, somehow reality doesn’t even seem to matter. The image makes its own reality independently of you.

I agree that an inspiring symbol can be a real achievementhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G…

Geraldine Hoff Doyle (July 31, 1924 – December 26, 2010) was the real-life model for the World War II era We Can Do It posters, an embodiment of the iconic World War II character Rosie the Riveter.
Geraldine Hoff was born in Inkster, Michigan. Her father Cornelious was an electrical contractor who died of pneumonia when she was 10 years old. Her mother, Augusta, was a composer stricken with scoliosis. After graduating from high school in Ann Arbor, in 1942 Geraldine found work as a metal presser in a Michigan factory. (As men started enlisting and being drafted into military service for World War II, women began to support the war effort by taking on roles, including factory work, that were formerly considered “male only.”)
Because she was a cello player, Geraldine feared a hand injury from the metal pressing machines and soon left the factory. During the brief time she worked there a wire photographer took a picture of her.

Worked in what was previously regarded a “male only” job, was well rounded it seems as a cello player, managed all that it looks like with less parental support than many, and was the inspiration for a powerful image.  It looks like she fit the bill pretty well.

Farewell, “Rosie,” you still inspire…I have seen her image in women’s apartments and homes in the UK, Spain, Ireland, France and even Bosnia.
Her spirit truly lives on…

Arguably, whether Ms. Doyle riveted or not……she participated in American’s war effort, and that is something awesome.  Ordinary people did extraordinary things, a lesson we can all learn.  We can do it!

Let’s not forgetYes, we’ll always need to remember this iconic figure in American history.
What we also must remember, is that this same American government, which used a massive propaganda campaign to encourage women to work in the factories for the war effort, used another massive propaganda campaign effort to force these newly empowered women back into their “natural” roles as wife and mother.
Of course such resentment caused those women to empower their daughters, giving rise to women’s lib in the 60s and 70s!