Shortcodes

Typography & Shortcodes

The theme includes custom shortcodes integrated in default editor that allow you to easily add styled buttons, content boxes, content columns, etc. and even Google maps to your posts, pages and widgets.

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Tabs

Tabs are very versatile both as organization and navigational constructs. With Skylab, tabs in the markup specified below are already hooked up — no extra work required.

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[tab title=”We Can Do It!”]

”We Can Do It!” is an American wartime propaganda poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost worker morale. The poster is generally thought to be based on a black-and-white wire service photograph taken of a Michigan factory worker named Geraldine Hoff.

J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” poster from 1943

J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” poster from 1943

The poster was seen very little during World War II. It was rediscovered in the early 1980s and widely reproduced in many forms, often called ”We Can Do It!” but also called ”Rosie the Riveter” after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. The ”We Can Do It!” image was used to promote feminism and other political issues beginning in the 1980s. The image made the cover of the Smithsonian magazine in 1994 and was fashioned into a US first-class mail stamp in 1999. It was incorporated in 2008 into campaign materials for several American politicians, and was reworked by an artist in 2010 to celebrate the first woman becoming prime minister of Australia. The poster is one of the ten most-requested images at the National Archives and Records Administration.

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[tab title=”Geraldine Hoff”]

Another poster by J. Howard Miller from the same series as “We Can Do It!”

Another poster by J. Howard Miller from the same series as “We Can Do It!”

Miller is believed by many to have based the ”We Can Do It!” poster on a monochrome United Press International (UPI) photograph taken of Ann Arbor, Michigan, factory worker Geraldine Hoff in early 1942 when she was 17. The photograph of Hoff shows her wearing a polka-dotted bandana on her head, standing up and leaning over a metal-stamping machine, and operating it with her hands at thigh level firmly on the controls. Hoff left her factory job soon after the publicity photograph was taken; she heard that the metal-stamping machine had injured the hand of the previous operator, and she did not want to ruin her ability to play the cello. She obtained a new job as a timekeeper for another factory.

If Miller was inspired by the UPI photograph at all, he freely re-interpreted it to create the poster, putting Hoff’s right hand up in a clenched fist, her left hand rolling up the right sleeve. Miller turned Hoff’s head to face the viewer, and made her more muscular. He also put a Westinghouse employee identification badge on her collar. Hoff knew nothing of this; she was unaware that Miller was making a poster. She married in 1943 to become Geraldine Doyle.
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[tab title=”Westinghouse”]

In 1942, Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller was hired by the Westinghouse Company’s War Production Coordinating Committee to create a series of posters for the war effort. One of these posters became the famous ”We Can Do It!” image—an image that in later years would also be called ”Rosie the Riveter”, though it was never given this title during the war. Miller is thought to have based his ”We Can Do It!” poster on a United Press International wire service photograph taken of Ann Arbor, Michigan, factory worker Geraldine Hoff (later Doyle), who was 17 and briefly working as a metal-stamping machine operator. The intent of the poster was to keep production up by boosting morale, not to recruit more women workers. It was shown only to Westinghouse employees in the Midwest during a two-week period in February 1943, then it disappeared for nearly four decades. During the war, the name ”Rosie” was not associated with the image, and it was not about women’s empowerment. It was only later, in the early 1980s, that the Miller poster was rediscovered and became famous, associated with feminism, and often mistakenly called ”Rosie The Riveter”.

Norman Rockwell’s image of ”Rosie the Riveter” received mass distribution on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on Memorial Day, May 29, 1943. Rockwell’s illustration features a brawny woman taking her lunch break with a rivet gun on her lap and beneath her Penny loafer a copy of Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf. Her lunch pail reads ”Rosie”; viewers quickly recognized this to be ”Rosie the Riveter” from the familiar song. Rockwell, America’s best-known popular illustrator of the day, posed his model to match the Sistine Chapel ceiling image of the prophet Isaiah, painted by Michelangelo in 1509. Rockwell’s model was a Vermont resident, 19-year-old Mary Doyle who was a telephone operator near where Rockwell lived, not a riveter.
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[tab title=”Rosie the Riveter”]

Rosie the Riveter is a cultural icon of the United States, representing the American women who worked in factories during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who were in the military. Rosie the Riveter is commonly used as a symbol of feminism and women’s economic power.

The term ”Rosie the Riveter” was first used in 1942 in a song of the same name written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. The song was recorded by numerous artists, including the popular big band leader Kay Kyser, and it became a national hit. The song portrays ”Rosie” as a tireless assembly line worker, doing her part to help the American war effort. The name is said to be a nickname for Rosie Bonavitas who was working for Convair in San Diego, California. The idea of Rosie resembled Veronica Foster, a real person who in 1941 was Canada’s poster girl for women in the war effort in ”Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl.”

Although women took on male dominated trades during World War II, they were expected to return to their everyday housework once men returned from the war. Government campaigns targeting women were addressed solely at housewives, perhaps because already employed women would move to the higher-paid ”essential” jobs on their own, perhaps because it was assumed that most would be housewives.
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[tab title=”History”]

Cover of the published music to the 1942 song

Cover of the published music to the 1942 song

Propaganda was also directed at their husbands, many of whom were unwilling to support such jobs. Most women opted to do this. Later, many women returned to traditional work such as clerical or administration positions, despite their reluctance to re-enter the lower-paying fields. However, some of these women continued working in the factories.

The individual who was the inspiration for the song was Rosalind P. Walter, who ”came from old money and worked on the night shift building the F4U Corsair fighter.” Later in life Walter was a philanthropist, a board member of the WNET public television station in New York and an early and long-time supporter of the Charlie Rose interview show.

Rosie the Riveter became most closely associated with another real woman, Rose Will Monroe, who was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1920 and moved to Michigan during World War II. She worked as a riveter at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan, building B-29 and B-24 bombers for the U.S. Army Air Forces. Monroe was asked to star in a promotional film about the war effort at home. The song ”Rosie the Riveter” was popular at the time, and Monroe happened to best fit the description of the worker depicted in the song. ”Rosie” went on to become perhaps the most widely recognized icon of that era. The films and posters she appeared in were used to encourage women to go to work in support of the war effort.
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[tab title=”Rediscovery”]

In 1982, Doyle saw the ”We Can Do It!” poster reproduced in a magazine article, possibly ”Poster Art for Patriotism’s Sake”, a Washington Post Magazine article about posters in the collection of the National Archives. Doyle immediately recognized it as an image of herself, though she had never seen it before.

A propaganda poster from 1942 encouraging unity between labor and management of GM

A propaganda poster from 1942 encouraging unity between labor and management of GM

In subsequent years, the poster was re-appropriated to promote feminism. Feminists saw in the image an embodiment of female empowerment. The ”We” was understood to mean ”We Women”, uniting all women in a sisterhood fighting against gender inequality. This was very different from the poster’s 1943 use to control employees and to discourage labor unrest.

Smithsonian magazine put the image on its cover in March 1994, to invite the viewer to read a featured article about wartime posters. The US Postal Service created a 33¢ stamp in February 1999 based on the image, with the added words ”Women Support War Effort”. A Westinghouse poster from 1943 was put on display at the National Museum of American History, part of the exhibit showing items from the 1930s and ’40s.
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Accordions

Accordions are similar to tabs as a way to selectively show a single panel of content at a time.

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FAQ

[accordion collapsible=”false” framed=”false” type=”2″]
[section title=”What kind of questions can I ask here?”]

The best questions lead to a solution or a better understanding of a problem. No question is too esoteric and no level of technical knowledge is looked down upon. If you have tried a dozen different things to solve your problem and you hit a roadblock, just ask. Chances are someone else has or had the same problem at some point.

The more detailed you are in the question you are asking, the better! Include code, examples, and anything else needed to give context to your question.

[/section]
[section title=”What are the rules around asking questions? What kinds of questions should I not ask here?”]

We are building a community knowledge base that can be searched. If your question would not provide value if a visitor found it using a search, it is probably not appropriate for this forum.

If your motivation for asking the question is ”I would like to participate in a discussion about ___”, then you should not be asking here. However, if your motivation is ”I would like others to explain ___ to me”, then you are probably OK. (Discussions are of course welcome in our real time web chat.)

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[section title=”Who is responding to questions here?”]

The ThemeForest community is responding to questions on this forum and is both moderated by ThemeForest employees and active community members.

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[section title=”Will ThemeForest respond to my question?”]

Sometimes. ThemeForest employees and support may respond to questions on this site. You should not expect a ThemeForest employee to answer your question on this site. If your question can only be answered by a ThemeForest employee, it is probably not appropriate for this forum.

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Framed FAQ

[accordion collapsible=”false” framed=”true” type=”2″]
[section title=”Why are some questions or answers removed?”]

Questions that are off topic or not answerable will be removed by the community. Both ThemeForest and community members with certain levels of reputation can moderate posts.

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[section title=”Other people can edit my posts?”]

Yes. This is a community edited forum (much like Wikipedia). Users with certain reputation levels can edit both questions an answers to improve the content on this site.

We would like to encourage you to edit both questions and answers in order to make the content on this site as useful as possible.

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Please be careful when promoting goods and services on this forum. This is not a place for advertisements.

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[section title=”How do I contact ThemeForest?”]

Please contact twitter.com/envato_support for official platform support.

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Framed & Not Collapsible

[accordion collapsible=”false” framed=”true”]
[section title=”Gherman Titov”]

A Soviet cosmonaut who, on 6 August 1961, became the second human to orbit the Earth aboard Vostok 2, preceded by Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1.

[/section]
[section title=”Alan Shepard”]

An American naval aviator, test pilot, flag officer, NASA astronaut, who in 1961 became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space.

[/section]
[section title=”Jim Lovell”]

A former NASA astronaut and a retired captain in the United States Navy, most famous as the commander of the Apollo 13 mission.

[/section]
[section title=”Pavel Popovich”]

A Soviet cosmonaut who was the 4th cosmonaut in space, the 6th person in orbit, and the 8th person who have flown in space.

[/section]
[/accordion]
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Not Collapsible

[accordion collapsible=”false” framed=”false”]
[section title=”Yuri Gagarin”]

The first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.

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[section title=”Neil Armstrong”]

An American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also an aerospace engineer, naval aviator and test pilot.

[/section]
[section title=”Valentina Tereshkova”]

The first woman to have flown in space, having been selected from more than four hundred applicants and five finalists to pilot Vostok 6.

[/section]
[section title=”Buzz Aldrin”]

An American astronaut, and the second person to walk on the Moon. He was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history.

[/section]
[/accordion]
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Collapsible

[accordion collapsible=”true” framed=”false”]
[section title=”Yuri Gagarin”]

The first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961.

[/section]
[section title=”Neil Armstrong”]

An American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also an aerospace engineer, naval aviator and test pilot.

[/section]
[section title=”Valentina Tereshkova”]

The first woman to have flown in space, having been selected from more than four hundred applicants and five finalists to pilot Vostok 6.

[/section]
[section title=”Buzz Aldrin”]

An American astronaut, and the second person to walk on the Moon. He was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history.

[/section]
[/accordion]
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Framed & Collapsible

[accordion collapsible=”true” framed=”true”]
[section title=”Gherman Titov”]

A Soviet cosmonaut who, on 6 August 1961, became the second human to orbit the Earth aboard Vostok 2, preceded by Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1.

[/section]
[section title=”Alan Shepard”]

An American naval aviator, test pilot, flag officer, NASA astronaut, who in 1961 became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space.

[/section]
[section title=”Jim Lovell”]

A former NASA astronaut and a retired captain in the United States Navy, most famous as the commander of the Apollo 13 mission.

[/section]
[section title=”Pavel Popovich”]

A Soviet cosmonaut who was the 4th cosmonaut in space, the 6th person in orbit, and the 8th person who have flown in space.

[/section]
[/accordion]
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Google Maps

Google Maps is a map service that you view in your web browser. Depending on your location, you can view basic or custom maps and local business information, including business locations, contact information, and driving directions.

[map width=”100%” height=”320″ zoom=”10″ type=”ROADMAP”]
[marker address=”13/2 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne VIC 3000″]Envato (FlashDen Pty Ltd) 13/2 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne VIC 3000 (03) 9023 0074 ‎ · envato.com[/marker]
[/map]

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Dropcaps and Highlights

All images, names and logos used on this page are the trademarks of Wikipedia the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and their use or appearance on this website does not constitute any affiliation, endorsement or support.

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Rosie the Riveter

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]

osie the Riveter is a [highlight]cultural icon[/highlight] of the United States, representing the American women who worked in factories during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who were in the military. Rosie the Riveter is commonly used as a symbol of feminism and women’s economic power.

Cover of the published music to the 1942 song

Cover of the published music to the 1942 song

The term [highlight background=”#111111″ color=”#ffffff”]”Rosie the Riveter”[/highlight] was first used in 1942 in a song of the same name written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. The song was recorded by numerous artists, including the popular big band leader Kay Kyser, and it became a national hit. The song portrays ”Rosie” as a tireless assembly line worker, doing her part to help the American war effort. The name is said to be a nickname for Rosie Bonavitas who was working for Convair in [highlight background=”#cfcfcf”]San Diego, California[/highlight]. The idea of Rosie resembled Veronica Foster, a real person who in 1941 was Canada’s poster girl for women in the war effort in ”Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl.”

Although women took on male dominated trades during [highlight]World War II[/highlight], they were expected to return to their everyday housework once men returned from the war. Government campaigns targeting women were addressed solely at housewives, perhaps because already employed women would move to the higher-paid ”essential” jobs on their own, perhaps because it was assumed that most would be housewives. One government advertisement asked women ”Can you use an electric mixer? If so, you can learn to operate a drill.”:160 Propaganda was also directed at their husbands, many of whom were unwilling to support such jobs. Most women opted to do this. [highlight background=”#111111″ color=”#ffffff”]Later, many women returned to traditional work[/highlight] such as clerical or administration positions, despite their reluctance to re-enter the lower-paying fields. However, some of these women continued working in the factories.

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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]

he individual who was the inspiration for the song was Rosalind P. Walter, who ”came from old money and worked on the night shift building the F4U Corsair fighter.” Later in life Walter was a philanthropist, a board member of the WNET public television station in [highlight background=”#cfcfcf”]New York[/highlight] and an early and long-time supporter of the Charlie Rose interview show.

A propaganda poster from 1942 encouraging unity between labor and management of GM

A propaganda poster from 1942 encouraging unity between labor and management of GM

[highlight]Rosie the Riveter[/highlight] became most closely associated with another real woman, Rose Will Monroe, who was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky in 1920 and moved to Michigan during [highlight background=”#111111″ color=”#ffffff”]World War II[/highlight]. She worked as a riveter at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan, building B-29 and B-24 bombers for the U.S. Army Air Forces. Monroe was asked to star in a promotional film about the war effort at home. The song ”Rosie the Riveter” was popular at the time, and Monroe happened to best fit the description of the worker depicted in the song. ”Rosie” went on to become perhaps the most widely recognized icon of that era. The films and posters she appeared in were used to encourage women to go to work in support of the war effort.

At the age of 50, Monroe realized her dream of flying when she obtained a pilot’s license. In 1978, she crashed in her small propeller plane when the engine stalled during takeoff. The accident resulted in the loss of one kidney and the sight in her left eye, and ended her flying career. She died from kidney failure on May 31, 1997, in [highlight background=”#cfcfcf”]Clarksville, Indiana[/highlight], at the age of 77.

According to the Encyclopedia of American Economic History, [highlight]”Rosie the Riveter”[/highlight] inspired a social movement that increased the number of working American women from 12 million to 20 million by 1944, a 57% increase from 1940. By 1944 only 1.7 million unmarried men between the ages of 20 and 34 worked in the defense industry, while 4.1 million unmarried women between those ages did so.

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Buttons

Buttons are a convenient tool when it comes to more traditional actions. To that end, Skylab includes easy to use button styles that you can customize or override to fit your needs.

[button url=”#” window=”true” style=”orange” size=”small”]See Website[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”blue” size=”small”]Submit[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”green” size=”small”]Submit[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”cream” size=”small”]See Website[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”red” size=”small”]Submit[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”pink” size=”small”]Submit[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”purple” size=”small”]Submit[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”black” size=”small”]Submit[/button]

[button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”orange” size=”medium”]See Website[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”blue” size=”medium”]See Website[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”green” size=”medium”]See Website[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”cream” size=”medium”]Medium[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”red” size=”medium”]Medium[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”pink” size=”medium”]Medium[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”purple” size=”medium”]Medium[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”black” size=”medium”]Medium[/button]

[button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”orange” size=”large”]See Website[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”blue” size=”large”]See Website[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”green” size=”large”]Large[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”cream” size=”large”]See Website[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”red” size=”large”]Large[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”pink” size=”large”]See Website[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”purple” size=”large”]Large[/button] [button url=”javascript:void(null);” window=”true” style=”black” size=”large”]Large[/button]

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Blockquotes & Figures

A section that is quoted from another source

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Miller is believed by many to have based the ”We Can Do It!” poster on a monochrome United Press International (UPI) photograph taken of Ann Arbor, Michigan, factory worker Geraldine Hoff in early 1942 when she was 17. The photograph of Hoff shows her wearing a polka-dotted bandana on her head, standing up and leaning over a metal-stamping machine, and operating it with her hands at thigh level firmly on the controls. Hoff left her factory job soon after the publicity photograph was taken; she heard that the metal-stamping machine had injured the hand of the previous operator, and she did not want to ruin her ability to play the cello. She obtained a new job as a timekeeper for another factory.

”We Can Do It!” is an American wartime propaganda poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost worker morale. The poster is generally thought to be based on a black-and-white wire service photograph taken of a Michigan factory worker named Geraldine Hoff.

The poster was seen very little during World War II. It was rediscovered in the early 1980s and widely reproduced in many forms, often called ”We Can Do It!” but also called ”Rosie the Riveter” after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. The ”We Can Do It!” image was used to promote feminism and other political issues beginning in the 1980s. The image made the cover of the Smithsonian magazine in 1994 and was fashioned into a US first-class mail stamp in 1999. It was incorporated in 2008 into campaign materials for several American politicians, and was reworked by an artist in 2010 to celebrate the first woman becoming prime minister of Australia. The poster is one of the ten most-requested images at the National Archives and Records Administration.

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If Miller was inspired by the UPI photograph at all, he freely re-interpreted it to create the poster, putting Hoff’s right hand up in a clenched fist, her left hand rolling up the right sleeve. Miller turned Hoff’s head to face the viewer, and made her more muscular. He also put a Westinghouse employee identification badge on her collar. Hoff knew nothing of this; she was unaware that Miller was making a poster. She married in 1943 to become Geraldine Doyle.

The “We Can Do It!” poster was used by the Ad Council for its 70th anniversary celebration.

The “We Can Do It!” poster was used by the Ad Council for its 70th anniversary celebration.

In 1942, Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller was hired by the Westinghouse Company’s War Production Coordinating Committee to create a series of posters for the war effort. One of these posters became the famous ”We Can Do It!” image—an image that in later years would also be called ”Rosie the Riveter”, though it was never given this title during the war. Miller is thought to have based his ”We Can Do It!” poster on a United Press International wire service photograph taken of Ann Arbor, Michigan, factory worker Geraldine Hoff (later Doyle), who was 17 and briefly working as a metal-stamping machine operator. The intent of the poster was to keep production up by boosting morale, not to recruit more women workers. It was shown only to Westinghouse employees in the Midwest during a two-week period in February 1943, then it disappeared for nearly four decades. During the war, the name ”Rosie” was not associated with the image, and it was not about women’s empowerment.

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Fluid Grid System

Provides the shortcodes to create a grid system or magazine style columns for laying out your pages just the way you need them. On smaller monitors it becomes fluid.

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6/6 Columns

All images, names and logos used on this page are the trademarks of Wikipedia the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and their use or appearance on this website does not constitute any affiliation, endorsement or support.

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We Can Do It! is an American wartime propaganda poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost worker morale. The poster is generally thought to be based on a black-and-white wire service photograph taken of a Michigan factory worker named Geraldine Hoff.

The poster was seen very little during World War II. It was rediscovered in the early 1980s and widely reproduced in many forms, often called ”We Can Do It!” but also called ”Rosie the Riveter” after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. The ”We Can Do It!” image was used to promote feminism and other political issues beginning in the 1980s. The image made the cover of the Smithsonian magazine in 1994 and was fashioned into a US first-class mail stamp in 1999. It was incorporated in 2008 into campaign materials for several American politicians, and was reworked by an artist in 2010 to celebrate the first woman becoming prime minister of Australia. The poster is one of the ten most-requested images at the National Archives and Records Administration.

After its rediscovery, observers often assumed that the image was always used as a call to inspire women workers to join the war effort. However, during the war the image was strictly internal to Westinghouse, displayed only during February 1943, and was not for recruitment but to exhort already-hired women to work harder. Feminists and others have seized upon the uplifting attitude and apparent message to remake the image into many different forms, including self empowerment, campaign promotion, advertising, and parodies.

We Can Do It!

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the US government called upon manufacturers to produce greater amounts of war goods. The workplace atmosphere at large factories was often tense because of resentment built up between management and labor unions throughout the 1930s. Directors of companies such as General Motors (GM) sought to minimize past friction and encourage teamwork. In response to a rumored public relations campaign by the United Auto Workers union, GM quickly produced a propaganda poster in 1942 showing both labor and management rolling up their sleeves, aligned toward maintaining a steady rate of war production. The poster read, ”Together We Can Do It!” and ”Keep ’Em Firing!”

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In creating such posters, corporations wished to increase production by tapping popular pro-war sentiment, with the ultimate goal of preventing the government from exerting greater control over production.

Rosie the Riveter

During World War II, the ”We Can Do It!” poster was not connected to the 1942 song ”Rosie the Riveter”, nor to the widely seen Norman Rockwell painting called Rosie the Riveter that appeared on the cover of the Memorial Day issue of the Saturday Evening Post, May 29, 1943. The Westinghouse poster was not associated with any of the women nicknamed ”Rosie” who came forward to promote women working for war production on the home front. Rather, after being displayed for two weeks in February 1943 to some Westinghouse factory workers, it disappeared for nearly four decades. Other ”Rosie” images prevailed, often photographs of actual workers. The Office of War Information geared up for a massive nationwide advertising campaign to sell the war, but ”We Can Do It!” was not part of it.

A propaganda poster from 1942 encouraging unity between labor and management of GM

A propaganda poster from 1942 encouraging unity between labor and management of GM

Rockwell’s emblematic Rosie the Riveter painting was loaned by the Post to the US Treasury Department for use in posters and campaigns promoting war bonds. Following the war, the Rockwell painting gradually sank from public memory because it was copyrighted; all of Rockwell’s paintings were vigorously defended by his estate after his death. This protection resulted in the original painting gaining value—it sold for nearly $5 million in 2002. Conversely, the lack of protection for the ”We Can Do It!” image is one of the reasons it experienced a rebirth.

Ed Reis, a volunteer historian for Westinghouse, noted that the original image was not shown to female riveters during the war, so the recent association with ”Rosie the Riveter” was unjustified. Rather, it was targeted at women who were making helmet liners out of Micarta.

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4/4/4 Columns

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Westinghouse Electric

In 1942, Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller was hired by Westinghouse Electric’s internal War Production Coordinating Committee, through an advertising agency, to create a series of posters to display to the company’s workers. The intent of the poster project was to raise worker morale, to reduce absenteeism, to direct workers’ questions to management, and to lower the likelihood of labor unrest or a factory strike. Each of the more than 42 posters designed by Miller was displayed in the factory for two weeks, then replaced by the next one in the series. Most of the posters featured men; they emphasized traditional roles for men and women.

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One of the posters pictured a smiling male manager with the words ”Any Questions About Your Work? … Ask your Supervisor.”

No more than 1,800 copies of the 17-by-22-inch (559 by 432 mm) ”We Can Do It!” poster were printed. It was not initially seen beyond several Westinghouse factories in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Midwest, where it was scheduled to be displayed for two five-day work weeks. The targeted factories were making plasticized helmet liners impregnated with Micarta, a phenolic resin invented by Westinghouse. Mostly women were employed in this enterprise, which yielded some 13 million helmet liners over the course of the war.

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The slogan ”We Can Do It!” was probably not interpreted by the factory workers as empowering to women alone; they had been subjected to a series of paternalistic, controlling posters promoting management authority, employee capability and company unity, and the workers would likely have understood the image to mean ”Westinghouse Employees Can Do It”, all working together. The upbeat image served as gentle propaganda to boost employee morale and keep production from lagging. The pictured red, white and blue clothing was a subtle call to patriotism, one of the frequent tactics of corporate war production committees.

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Miller is believed by many to have based the ”We Can Do It!” poster on a monochrome United Press International (UPI) photograph taken of Ann Arbor, Michigan, factory worker Geraldine Hoff in early 1942 when she was 17.The photograph of Hoff shows her wearing a polka-dotted bandana on her head, standing up and leaning over a metal-stamping machine, and operating it with her hands at thigh level firmly on the controls.

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Hoff left her factory job soon after the publicity photograph was taken; she heard that the metal-stamping machine had injured the hand of the previous operator, and she did not want to ruin her ability to play the cello. She obtained a new job as a timekeeper for another factory. If Miller was inspired by the UPI photograph at all, he freely re-interpreted it to create the poster, putting Hoff’s right hand up in a clenched fist, her left hand rolling up the right sleeve.

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Miller turned Hoff’s head to face the viewer, and made her more muscular. He also put a Westinghouse employee identification badge on her collar. Hoff knew nothing of this; she was unaware that Miller was making a poster. She married in 1943 to become Geraldine Doyle. Westinghouse historian Charles A. Ruch, a Pittsburgh resident who had been friends with J. Howard Miller, said that he doubted Doyle’s connection to the image.

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He said Miller was not in the habit of working from photographs, but rather live models. Penny Coleman, the author of Rosie the Riveter: Women working on the home front in World War II, said that she and Ruch could not determine whether the UPI photo of Doyle had appeared in any of the periodicals that Miller would have seen. In subsequent years, the poster was re-appropriated to promote feminism. Feminists saw in the image an embodiment of female empowerment.

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Rediscovery

In 1982, Doyle saw the ”We Can Do It!” poster reproduced in a magazine article, possibly ”Poster Art for Patriotism’s Sake”, a Washington Post Magazine article about posters in the collection of the National Archives. Doyle immediately recognized it as an image of herself, though she had never seen it before.

In subsequent years, the poster was re-appropriated to promote feminism. Feminists saw in the image an embodiment of female empowerment. The ”We” was understood to mean ”We Women”, uniting all women in a sisterhood fighting against gender inequality. This was very different from the poster’s 1943 use to control employees and to discourage labor unrest.

Smithsonian magazine put the image on its cover in March 1994, to invite the viewer to read a featured article about wartime posters. The US Postal Service created a 33¢ stamp in February 1999 based on the image, with the added words ”Women Support War Effort”. A Westinghouse poster from 1943 was put on display at the National Museum of American History, part of the exhibit showing items from the 1930s and ’40s.

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Doyle gained a degree of notice from the connection to the iconic image. From time to time, she visited the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame to sign posters and greet well-wishers. She said it was probably best that she had not known back in her youth that she was represented on a famous poster: ”I couldn’t have handled all the excitement then.”

Legacy

Another poster by J. Howard Miller from the same series as “We Can Do It!”

Another poster by J. Howard Miller from the same series as “We Can Do It!”

Today, the image has become very widely known, far beyond its narrowly defined purpose during WWII. It has adorned t-shirts, tattoos, coffee cups and refrigerator magnets—so many different products that the Washington Post called it the ”most over-exposed” souvenir item available in Washington, D.C. It was used in 2008 by some of the various regional campaigners working to elect Sarah Palin, Ron Paul and Hillary Clinton. Michelle Obama was worked into the image by some attendees of the 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. The image has been employed by corporations such as Clorox who used it in advertisements for household cleaners, the pictured woman provided in this instance with a wedding ring on her left hand. Parodies of the image have included famous women, men, animals and fictional characters. A bobblehead doll and an action figure toy have been produced.

After Julia Gillard became the first female prime minister of Australia in June 2010, a Melbourne street artist calling himself Phoenix pasted Gillard’s face into a new monochrome version of the ”We Can Do It!” poster. Another Magazine published a photograph of the poster taken on Hosier Lane, Melbourne, in July 2010, showing that the original ”War Production Co-ordinating Committee” mark in the lower right had been replaced with a URL pointing to Phoenix’s Flickr photostream.

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In March 2011, Phoenix produced a color version which stated ”She Did It!” in the lower right,[32] then in January 2012 he pasted ”Too Sad” diagonally across the poster to represent his disappointment with developments in Australian politics.

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Geraldine Doyle died in December 2010. Utne Reader went ahead with their scheduled January–February 2011 cover image: a parody of ”We Can Do It!” featuring Marge Simpson raising her right hand in a fist. The editors of the magazine expressed regret at the passing of Doyle, ”the likely inspiration for the Rosie character”.

A stereoscopic (3D) image of ”We Can Do It!” was created for the closing credits of the 2011 superhero film Captain America: The First Avenger. The image served as the background for the title card of English actress Hayley Atwell.

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