If you click here, you will an article exploring the identity of the famous Rosie the Riveter. It is well worth a read – not least for the insight the casual sexism of the caption next to Naomi Parker. This at least helps us to understand the frustrations of women like Betty Friedan.
“For years, people believed that a Michigan woman named Geraldine Hoff Doyle was the model for the poster. Doyle, who had worked briefly as a metal presser in a factory in 1942, saw a photograph of a bandanna-clad woman working at an industrial lathe reprinted in a magazine in the 1980s, and identified the woman as her younger self; she later linked this photo to Miller’s famous poster. By the 1990s, media reports were identifying Doyle as the “real-life Rosie the Riveter,” a claim that was widely repeated for years, including in
Doyle’s obituary in 2010.
But Kimble wasn’t so sure. “How do we know that?” he says of his initial reaction to reading that Doyle was the woman in the image that (supposedly) inspired Miller’s poster. “Everything else we think we know about that poster is dubious. How do we know about her?”
Though he already knew the artist had no descendants, and had left limited papers behind, with no clue of who his model might have been, Kimble began looking into the 1942 photograph. And after five years of searching, he found “the smoking gun,” as he calls it—a copy of the photograph with the original caption glued on the back. Dated March 1942 at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, it identified “Pretty Naomi Parker” as the woman at the lathe.
Here is the original caption, which speaks volumes about how women working in factories during the war were seen:
“Pretty Naomi Parker is as easy to look at as overtime pay on the week’s check. And she’s a good example of an old contention that glamor is what goes into the clothes, and not the clothes. Pre-war fashion frills are only a discord in war-time clothing for women. Naomi wears heavy shoes, black suit, and a turban to keep her hair out of harm’s way (we mean the machine, you dope).”
