Miss America, Rosie the Riveter, and World War II

Abstract

In October 1943, a writer for the Women’s Home Companion observed: “American men, bless them, expect their women to be (a) useful or (b) beautiful, but seldom both at once. To many of them there’s the type of girl they dream about when they’re growing up and the type they marry. Or in reverse order, there’s the kind who is capable in an emergency and the kind who’s nice to have around when there’s moonlight … the girl who can handle a crane like a man and the girl who is too pretty to learn … the girl the boys overseas are engaged to and the girls whose pictures they use to adorn the walls of their tents. Grease paint and black velvet are the magic brew of fascination, but a gal whose face may be charmingly daubed with engine grease and black oil is the kid the boys have got used to ignoring.”1 This conundrum of glamour and grime, of Miss America and Rosie the Riveter, defines the America of 1941 to 1945 with its conflicting worlds of beauty pageants, defense factories, cosmetic advertising, and scrap drives. How and why was it possible, almost imperative, for the World War II ideology of the United States to support both the glamour girl of the beauty pageant and the grimy girl of the factory swing shift?