We Can Do It!
is an American World War II wartime poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost female worker morale.
It was rediscovered in the early 1980s and widely reproduced in many forms, often mistakenly called "Rosie the Riveter", which is a different depiction of a female war production worker.
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.
[2] People 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.
Doyle thought that she had also been captured in a wartime photograph of a woman factory worker, and she assumed that this photo inspired Miller's poster.
Conflating her as "Rosie the Riveter", Doyle was honored by many organizations including the Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government called upon manufacturers to produce greater amounts of war goods.
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.
[9] In 1942, 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.
[1] It was not initially seen beyond several Westinghouse factories in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the midwestern U.S., where it was scheduled to be displayed for two five-day work weeks starting Monday, February 15, 1943.
[1][12][13][14][15] The targeted factories were making plasticized helmet liners impregnated with Micarta, a phenolic resin invented by Westinghouse.
worker's collar identifies her as a Westinghouse Electric plant floor employee;[17] the pictured red, white and blue clothing was a subtle call to patriotism, one of the frequent tactics of corporate war production committees.
[17] Rockwell's emblematic Rosie the Riveter painting was loaned by the Post to the U.S. Treasury Department for use in posters and campaigns promoting war bonds.
[1][17] History professor Jeremiah Axelrod commented on the image's combination of femininity with the "masculine (almost macho) composition and body language.
"[23] 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".
[24][25][26] 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.
The photo is one of a series of photographs taken at Naval Air Station Alameda in California, showing Parker and her sister working at their war jobs during March 1942.
[33][34] These images were published in various newspapers and magazines beginning in April 1942, during a time when Doyle was still attending high school in Michigan.
[17] 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.
[1] The Children's Museum of Indianapolis showed a four-by-five-foot (1.2 by 1.5 m) replica made by artist Kristen Cumings from thousands of Jelly Belly candies.
[40] 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.
The Facebook app was called "Rosify Yourself", referring to Rosie the Riveter; it allowed viewers to upload images of their faces to be incorporated into the "We Can Do It!"
[51] The staff of the television show Today posted two "Rosified" images on their website, using the faces of news anchors Matt Lauer and Ann Curry.
