268 ChaPter^5
a young woman wearing a bandanna on her head and flexing her strong arms,
became a female icon performing her patriotic duty by producing munitions.
“Rosie” is still a component of today’s pop culture. Photographers from agen-
cies like the Army’s First Motion Picture Unit would visit munitions factories
and interview and photograph attractive women to use in advertisement cam-
paigns. One woman, Norma Jeane Dougherty, an eighteen-year-old working
for a company called Radioplane in Burbank, California, earned $20 a week
making pilotless remote-control aircraft [what we today call drones]. Norma
had her picture taken by an Army’s First Motion Picture Unit photographer.
The published photo helped Dougherty catch the eye of people in Hollywood.
She soon left the defense plant, moved to Hollywood, and changed her name
to Marilyn Monroe.
Besides featuring pretty women, government propaganda compared muni-
tions to traditional domestic work to stress that women wartime workers were
performing these uncharacteristic roles during a temporary emergency. The
government wanted women to perform their duties as mothers and citizens
too. Munitions making, then, was like running a sewing machine. Operating
a drill press was like using an electric mixer in the kitchen. The governmentFIGuRE 5-10 Rosie the Riveter