In January 1943 the Saturday Evening Post profiled Factory Follies, a wartime effort aimed at boosting worker morale. Bands of Broadway performers staged short lunchtime shows for tens of thousands of workers at companies like the Sperry Gyroscope Corporation in Lake Success, NY. The article featured a series of photographs taken at Sperry during one such performance. In addition to pictures of the entertainers, the Saturday Evening Post presented reaction shots from a number of Sperry workers, both women and men. Studying the candid images of women workers provides a rare photographic glimpse into the material world of working women during World War II. Photos depicted machine workers Alma Doughty and Catherine Humann eating and laughing at the show. Doughty wore a over her head. Humann did not. The seemingly innocuous difference between these workers was, in fact, significant. The clothing and hairstyles these women wore to work reveal an important contest between workers and Sperry managers that revolved around issues of gender and identity. Messages about workplace safety, directed primarily at women, became a dominant theme both nationally and at Sperry during WW II. The company devoted considerable resources trying to reduce accidents, particularly among women workers. The campaign focused on safety practices that eliminated traditional markers of femininity such as long hair and skirts. After encountering resistance, Sperry repackaged its new safety practices as sophisticated and feminine. The company embraced the idea of multiple femininities in the workplace as part of the refraining effort. Women and men workers reacted to these developments in a variety of ways - some expressed ambivalence, others conveyed enthusiasm. As a large manufacturer during WW II that followed national trends, Sperry provides a good, representative case study for complicating our understanding of the way that ideas about gender and labor relations shaped one another during the war. The introduction of unprecedented numbers of white women and African American women and men to war industries triggered a series of complex changes that conflicted with traditional gender roles for men and women. At a time when beauty pageants and other objectifying forums gained broad, national popularity, government agencies and some large employers presented women in the industrial workplace in less demeaning forms. The Department of Labor created special groups to encourage manufacturers to employ women. In particular, the Bureau issued a series of twenty Special Bulletins during the course of the war. These covered topics ranging from Washing and Toilet Facilities for Women in Industry, to Women's Effective War Work Requires Good Posture. Sperry's corporate culture embraced women workers, lionizing them for embodying important values such as timeliness or patriotism, regardless of physical appearance. Despite Sperry's supportive rhetoric, managers articulated a variety of concerns related to women workers; safety was chief among them. Reflecting broader national campaigns, company publications bombarded women with messages concerning safety throughout the war years. Sperry's employee newspaper, the Sperry News, frequently reminded women workers about the importance of wearing head coverings to prevent hair from getting caught in moving machinery. Photographs like Figure 1 of real life employees with bald patches where machines ripped hair from their scalps accompanied a number of the warnings. While the warnings included men, the majority of the images depicted women, the true target audience. Initially, the editors' warnings chided women, suggesting that vanity was the underlying cause of accidents. One such notice, which delicately omitted photographs, related the alarming experience of a young woman who ended up with a nine inch gash around the base of her scalp and a permanent bald spot. Nonetheless, the editors admonished her, [This accident] happened because she refused to wear her safety hat (Keep It AH 12). …