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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/feminism-poster-rosie-riveter
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| Rosie the Riveter is an emblem of capitalism | Rosie the Riveter is an emblem of capitalism |
| (4 months later) | |
| Don’t get my dad started on the Australian military alliance with the US during the second world war. Well, don’t, unless you want an evening of incursion and shiraz. Trevor has strong opinions on north American propaganda and its ongoing role in the death of our soldiers and cultural identity. And this I first discovered when I was but a slip-of-a-feminist. | Don’t get my dad started on the Australian military alliance with the US during the second world war. Well, don’t, unless you want an evening of incursion and shiraz. Trevor has strong opinions on north American propaganda and its ongoing role in the death of our soldiers and cultural identity. And this I first discovered when I was but a slip-of-a-feminist. |
| I was 15 or thereabouts when I tacked a picture of Rosie the Riveter to my bedroom wall. I loved the famous image of the retro-lady with cartoon muscles but my dad, it seemed, did not. “Propaganda!” he said upon seeing the We Can Do It poster. “Patriarch!”, I hissed back, and moved Rosie to an even more prominent spot, above Siouxsie and the Banshees. | I was 15 or thereabouts when I tacked a picture of Rosie the Riveter to my bedroom wall. I loved the famous image of the retro-lady with cartoon muscles but my dad, it seemed, did not. “Propaganda!” he said upon seeing the We Can Do It poster. “Patriarch!”, I hissed back, and moved Rosie to an even more prominent spot, above Siouxsie and the Banshees. |
| Dad started saying something about the battle of the Coral Sea and the imperialism of America. All I knew was that this icon of female power was very hot in feminist circles, and that dad needed to shut up with his Oppression of My Gender. | Dad started saying something about the battle of the Coral Sea and the imperialism of America. All I knew was that this icon of female power was very hot in feminist circles, and that dad needed to shut up with his Oppression of My Gender. |
| Middle-class teens are ever fond of both oppression and of posters – and in this, they seem to have something in common with the contemporary left. When it was reported this week that the Rosie the Riveter poster had been appropriated to sell something other than female strength, progressives were aghast. | Middle-class teens are ever fond of both oppression and of posters – and in this, they seem to have something in common with the contemporary left. When it was reported this week that the Rosie the Riveter poster had been appropriated to sell something other than female strength, progressives were aghast. |
| Over at Boing Boing, publisher Jason Weisberger led the charge against the company Swiffer using the Rosie image to sell mops. “I love the clear tribute to an important historical image done in such a way as to piss on its legacy,” he wrote. | Over at Boing Boing, publisher Jason Weisberger led the charge against the company Swiffer using the Rosie image to sell mops. “I love the clear tribute to an important historical image done in such a way as to piss on its legacy,” he wrote. |
| Over at Feministing, a lass called Maya relieved herself of a similar mocking urge as she wrote: “I can’t wait to rush home from my full-time job to start my second shift of devalued, unpaid household labor with my Swiffer Bissel Steam Boost!” | Over at Feministing, a lass called Maya relieved herself of a similar mocking urge as she wrote: “I can’t wait to rush home from my full-time job to start my second shift of devalued, unpaid household labor with my Swiffer Bissel Steam Boost!” |
| The protectors of ethics and labour rights at the Huffington Post commended the company for their decision to take down the Rosie ads: “We're glad to see that Swiffer is taking responsibility and responding to its consumers,” they wrote upon receipt of an email from the company that promised it was, “not our intention to offend any group with the image.” | The protectors of ethics and labour rights at the Huffington Post commended the company for their decision to take down the Rosie ads: “We're glad to see that Swiffer is taking responsibility and responding to its consumers,” they wrote upon receipt of an email from the company that promised it was, “not our intention to offend any group with the image.” |
| Which “group”, I wondered, was it that could be so offended by what was a fairly common advertising trope? After all, "female power” has long been appropriated in advertisements and Rosie herself has been a shill for cleaning products before today. The “group”, I think, must be a sort of teenage-bedroom feminism unable – as I was in the 1980s – to look hard and see Rosie as Rosie should be seen. | Which “group”, I wondered, was it that could be so offended by what was a fairly common advertising trope? After all, "female power” has long been appropriated in advertisements and Rosie herself has been a shill for cleaning products before today. The “group”, I think, must be a sort of teenage-bedroom feminism unable – as I was in the 1980s – to look hard and see Rosie as Rosie should be seen. |
| For as long as the image was tacked to my wall, I ignored the Westinghouse Electric Corporation logo visible beneath Rosie’s bicep. I overlooked the plain fact that this image was not, after all, one that celebrated women’s labour rights, but was capitalism’s agitprop. Here is a motivational picture explicitly designed to encourage female munitions workers to pump out weapons harder : we can do it. We can be part of the wartime apparatus and then we can return to domestic duties once our husbands are restored. | For as long as the image was tacked to my wall, I ignored the Westinghouse Electric Corporation logo visible beneath Rosie’s bicep. I overlooked the plain fact that this image was not, after all, one that celebrated women’s labour rights, but was capitalism’s agitprop. Here is a motivational picture explicitly designed to encourage female munitions workers to pump out weapons harder : we can do it. We can be part of the wartime apparatus and then we can return to domestic duties once our husbands are restored. |
| No great capacity for analysis is required to see that Rosie communicated about as much female strength as did Ginger Spice. This "Girl Power" was then, as it remains, the property of an electric corporation illuminating female achievement with all the wattage of a Wannabe. | No great capacity for analysis is required to see that Rosie communicated about as much female strength as did Ginger Spice. This "Girl Power" was then, as it remains, the property of an electric corporation illuminating female achievement with all the wattage of a Wannabe. |
| The left’s appetite for symbolism has become so insatiable, though, that little things like corporate sponsorship or, say, facts must not get in the way of these lovely cartoon muscles. How very dare a mop company suggest that cleaning is better than war; that housework is more noble that killing men in the Pacific? | The left’s appetite for symbolism has become so insatiable, though, that little things like corporate sponsorship or, say, facts must not get in the way of these lovely cartoon muscles. How very dare a mop company suggest that cleaning is better than war; that housework is more noble that killing men in the Pacific? |
| Back in 1980s Australia, my dad reminded me we had our own Rosie. Winnie the War Winner was the name ascribed to female factory workers, and later to a wartime communications device. But a picture of a crystal-set didn’t look as good on my wall as this flash American graphic design, and so I told my dad to stick it. I preferred the US brand of “feminism”. | Back in 1980s Australia, my dad reminded me we had our own Rosie. Winnie the War Winner was the name ascribed to female factory workers, and later to a wartime communications device. But a picture of a crystal-set didn’t look as good on my wall as this flash American graphic design, and so I told my dad to stick it. I preferred the US brand of “feminism”. |
| These days I prefer a brand of feminism that itself has no focus on brand or on images. Rosie is not now, never was and shall not be an image of anything but bondage. Let’s leave her to sell mops and munitions. Let’s leave a world built in symbols, and approach one that exists in material things. | These days I prefer a brand of feminism that itself has no focus on brand or on images. Rosie is not now, never was and shall not be an image of anything but bondage. Let’s leave her to sell mops and munitions. Let’s leave a world built in symbols, and approach one that exists in material things. |
| Let’s close the bedroom door and find the courage to think without the cues of advertising. | Let’s close the bedroom door and find the courage to think without the cues of advertising. |
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