by mindfarkk » Thu 13 Jan 2005, 10:35:53
you know it's just coincidental that i picked rosie the riveter for my recent avatar, but, there is a reason i did which relates to this thread.
if you look at "rosie the riveter" in her original incarnation in the media, you will observe polical proganda molding people's minds at its best. it's frightening, really, how *easily* people can be led. rosie the riveter made the scene shortly after the US involvement in WWII By the late 30's most middle class women were trying to be the best darn homemakers and most feminine gals they could be, and while they represented a moderate slice of society, most women who had to work for living probably tried to emulate them to some degree.
then all the men went off to fight the war, and there was a shortage of labor in the weapons plants. what to do, what to do? so the boys upstairs came up with the rosie the riveter compaign. tell women it's cool to work! look at rosie, she's flexing her BIG bicep! tell women it's better than ok, it's good and right for them to pick up that hammer and break a sweat! develop some muscles! you look FINE! suddenly women are flocking to the factories and taking up those welding and riveting jobs like never before.
then the boys come home and... they want their jobs back! what do you do?!?
well if you are the US government that's EASY. you just retire rosie and launch ANOTHER propaganda campaigns through the magazines and airwaves telling women THE OPPOSITE of what you just told them for 4-5 years. Sweating is BAD; doing a man's job is BAD, it's unfeminine, it's ugly, it's unpatriotic. And guess what? THEY BOUGHT IT!!!! they actually bought it! of course.... a lot of them weren't as content as they had been. but still... they went home. and then we get a lot of donna reeds and so forth. that is, those women who didn't have to go back to, say, their original jobs as maids and cooks and so forth. because the truth was, more women *had* to work outside the home just to make ends meet, than did not -- even then. only women of a certain status and privilege got to stay home and cover the domestic front while dad brought home the bacon. but what happened was for those who did have to work, virtually any job with any kind of decent wages or respectabilty attached to it was off limits. but that's another story. i'm here to tell you a little story about the ease with which public opinion is swayed.
all that from just pictures and slogans and IMAGES, identitiies, being spun out from TV and radio ads. amazing. so obvious, so contrived, and yet so effective. you have to imagine now they are ever so much more clever about it. or... maybe they don't need to be.
but here I am again to share something that seemed extremely funny to me.
, and then cried 
