Hardly anyone saw this now-iconic image during the Second World War: It was shown in only one factory for only a few weeks.40 But it was rediscovered in the 1980s and appropriated as a feminist emblem; the poster’s slogan was sufficiently open in its phrasing that it could be understood to refer to lots of things besides making tank guns and jet engines. In fact, neither Miller’s archetypal worker nor Naomi Parker in the Alameda photograph is riveting anything. The character of Rosie, with whom they later became associated, actually began life in song, a bit of propagandistic doggerel that
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