Hello. What we're looking at here is women in propaganda. And we did this with World War I, remember? We looked at a handful of images from World War I, and we saw that women were used to shame men into fighting in the war, right?
That liberty's been ravaged, she's been destroyed, or like the one that said, gee, I wish I were a man, I joined the Navy. So we saw, in World War I, we saw a couple images that were used to shame men into fighting. And then the rest of the images, we said, mostly reflected, like, female stereotypes, right?
That, like, they were mothers. They were there, you know, working alongside their husbands and fathers and brothers to support the war. But we did say there were a few images where we saw women in pants. There's the one image from World War I where women were all marching and they had tools. And so we said we did see some possibilities for...
Like different ways of seeing women and change. Now, World War II, way different. Well, I shouldn't say way different because there's still some of the same things. But it's mostly seeing women in ways that we haven't seen them before. Mostly a little bit more empowering.
And of course, you have the iconic Rosie the Riveter image. With her arm flex, we can do it. I gave you two images.
I gave you the one that you're probably most familiar with. that came from the government. But then the one that people were probably most familiar with at the time was the Norman Rockwell image that's on the right, because Saturday Evening Post was a highly subscribed magazine.
Norman Rockwell was a beloved artist. And so most people were probably more familiar with, I'm looking at the PowerPoint here, most people were probably more familiar with Rockwell's Rosie than they were with the Rosie that we are more familiar with today. And one thing to note about Rosie is she's looking at us.
Right? Remember we said in all these other pictures we've looked at before, like particularly when we talked about the Godey's Ladies book, none of the women were looking at us because it's a bold thing to do to look at for the subject in the art to be looking out at you. It's bold to look somebody in the eyes.
And so this Rosie, when she says we can do it, she's looking at us, which suggests her strength. Now, Rockwell's Rosie, the Rosie who's on the right in the PowerPoint, she's not looking at us. However, usually when we talk about this in class, students agree that that Rosie actually looks much more, she demonstrates much more strength, right, in just the way her physicality is and the tool that she's holding, the rivet gun that she's holding, kind of traditional ways of seeing physical strength.
And she's, again, according to the standards of the time, she seems a little less feminine. She's not looking at us, but this Rosie basically doesn't have time for us, right? She's got to eat her sandwich. She's got to get back to work.
So I think when that Rosie's not looking at us, the Rockwell's Rosie, she still suggests all that strength. She just doesn't have time to look at us. She's got stuff she's got to do. Now, I don't want to diminish the Rosie that we're most familiar with because she does exude strength. She's looking at us.
She has her arm flexed. But... She also very much reflects stereotypes, right? She is reflective of how beauty was defined in the 1940s.
She is a white woman, even though women of color are also working and participating in the war effort. She has her hair, I mean, it's up in a bandana, but there's still been some styling going on there. She's got her brows are done, she's wearing makeup. fingernails are manicured right so the suggestion seems to be you can be strong but you still have to be beautiful according to kind of what this message is telling us in the powerpoint i gave you um some some more recent examples of ways in which advertising has used rosie um so again she clearly does suggest strength um but these advertisements are um There's one from the 40s, it's a Clorox ad. The other two are, or the other three that are on there are super recent.
There's a Bissell ad, there's a woman, she doesn't have the red polka dots, but she's got, she's in blue, and she's got her, she's got like a blue bandana around her head like a, like a Rosie, and then her arm is raised, but it's to open an oven. And then we just stumbled upon some paper towels the other day, which, yay, paper towels, but have Rosie on it. I still bought them because we needed paper towels.
But also I kind of wanted to show you how this image is still kind of making its way into our advertising. Now the other images of propaganda that you have on there, again I think when you look at these images and you compare them back to World War I, you're going to see more instances of women's strength and pendants. And one of the things we want to think about with World War II is how we can connect World War II.
to the civil rights movement that we're going to see. Among people of color, it's going to begin in the 50s. For women, it's going to begin early 60s and head into the 70s.
But we can make direct connections, and you'll see that in some of the film clips that I have. that you're going to watch. They'll connect the roles of women in World War II.
These women will have a memory of this and they'll share this with their daughters. And so when the women's rights movement begins, these are the daughters of women who are going to be the ones who are who were fighting or laboring World War II, or some of them are the women who themselves were laboring in World War II. And again, we'll make that connection when we get to the 60s and 70s. But I wanted you to start thinking about it here. But again, if you look at some of these images, there's work to be done in a war to be won now.
In that image, all of those women are in pants. They're all using tools. There's only one woman who's kind of traditional.
She's like a... in a maid's uniform and she's serving food. But all the other women reflect change.
The girl he left behind is still behind him. She's a wow. Now, there was one like that in World War I, but this one, again, seems to suggest even a little bit more strength because there's that rosy image again.
And he's there, but he's more kind of in the background. She's center, whereas in that World War I image, she wasn't quite a center. It was more they were right by each other. And then pitching in hell. Again, you've got women kind of hoisting things over their shoulders.
It's all women doing all the work. I didn't want you to get too excited, though. There's still not totally this significant change from World War I because there's still the wanted for murder.
Her careless talk cost lives. The idea that women are just gossipers and we sit around and talk about things that we don't really understand. And maybe we'd be sharing some news that we got from a letter.
letter from somebody in our family who was serving and, you know, we'd be just talking about out and about and share some top secret information because we can't be trusted with things. We just like to gossip. So a good short answer question on the exam is comparing that propaganda from World War I to World War II. So if you've got some questions or you're not really sure where some of those connections are, put those in the discussion board. Take care.