WIRED has a real honest-to-goodness woman engineer on the cover, and she isn’t just a couple of breasts.
She is, however, striking the Rosie the Riveter pose. It was her idea, and while I get that the idea is that “women are the workforce” and “we can do it,” it’s also worth remembering that “Rosie” and her fellow female workers were let go after the war-—their services were no longer required. It’s difficult for me to separate that part of the story from the Rosie icon, and I’m not sure I want to. It’s important to remember that history because we’re not so far removed from it that it can’t be repeated.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer used the Riveter pose in her 2010 campaign, which I found offensive at the time in large part because of the irony of her use of the “We Can Do It” tagline while she repeatedly takes orders from Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce. She has recently broken ranks with him, but I’m sure that’s just to keep up appearances. Pearce almost always gets his way, and when he doesn’t, it usually isn’t because of Brewer.
It’s not like it’s special that Arizona has a woman governor. She’s the third consecutive (Jane Hull and Janet Napolitano are her immediate predecessors), and she’s the fourth overall. It’s also not like she did anything special to win her first gubernatorial election, except sign the notorious SB1070 and take a few cheap shots at President Obama. Arizona has had its share of good governors and more than its share of bad governors, and Brewer is on the wrong side of that divide. Her adoption of Rosie seeks to capitalize on girl-power iconography for cheap political gain while her administration more accurately reflects the post-WWII reality of women making way for men.
A new geek website aimed at women, The Mary Sue, uses several comic Rosies as its identifying icon(s). While I have some issues with some of their reasoning for using “The Mary Sue” as their name, I’m left wondering why they couldn’t come up with something new and original for both the name and icon. Isn’t it time we let Rosie rest? Isn’t it time for a new icon? Isn’t it time for a name and an image that aren’t already hobbled with baggage that belonged to our mothers and grandmothers? Don’t we deserve it?
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