Media shows the picture of Cool. Chapter 9: Creating "Rosie the Riveter"

There are a lot of ways that you can look at the creation of "Rosie the Riveter." Is it empowering to women? Is it pushing a role onto them? Perception can really do a lot for how a person would view Rosie. Then again, that can be said for anything in life, all intentions aside.

Image: 'Man Up, Nancy!' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/94213256@N00/2376491048

It was an interesting time for women though. Where just staying at home and doing housework were once viewed as the ideal for an American wife, all of a sudden joining a workforce and being the heroin at home fell into their lap, no, was thrown into their lap. Pictures in newspapers glorified the working woman. It looked like something to pursue. Walking arm in arm with your fellow workmate, looking beautiful, happy, and feminine in work clothes. It's just so strange when not too long before, a cooking, cleaning housewife was always glorified. Media really made it do a 180 degree turn.

This happens a lot with media. It tells us what the cool thing to do is. And if you're not doing it, there's something wrong with you. Rosie the Riveter was created to make an image for women. An image that a beautiful, feminine woman could still be in the workforce and help out their husbands and sons by working in factories. Meanwhile, the entity who will really reap the benefits of this would be the government. Sure, it may be empowering and maybe even liberating for the woman to have these jobs in factories and working with heavy machinery, outside of the house. But they leave the children at home and really put a lot of stress on themselves by taking on so many responsibilities. The government is just getting more weapons for the military and replacing the workers that were sent overseas to fight in World War II. Though, now a lot of women were joining the military - mostly as nurses.

Today, not just women, but people in general tend to look to the media for what's cool, many times without intention. It's a bit unfair, the standards that are put up. But perhaps it is that these are so hard to reach that people value them greatly. At the same time, this causes a lot of stress for people who just can't seem to meet these standards. People develop eating disorders and strange habits to try and achieve these. When you walk around an urban area, so many people with the same clothes, same hairstyles. Minimal individuality. But it's hard to blame them, when these things are pushed in their faces and give the perception of value.

It's tough though. How do we know what's cool if we don't have something to tell us what's cool? We don't know how to make the decisions for ourselves, it seems. Someone is deciding it for many. It's interesting. And it's understandable why media is the place to look. You don't want to be ridiculed. It hurts. So you try and fit an image. A lot of people do it for comfort in that aspect. It doesn't mean they can't totally think for themselves. But there are some things that many should really think about. Like, why are you paying $200 for the new Jordans? They were made in several minutes by a Chinese child in a factory under horrible conditions with cheap fabric. A pair that you're only going to wear once, then put it in your closet with your sixty other pairs of sneakers. Because you don't want to get them dirty. Because that's not what sneakers are for. And yet, so many people go crazy for them. Please don't expose me to the media that they are exposed to. I really don't want to find out what's so amazing about them and then want every pair too.

Image: 'Head in Hands' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34120957@N04/4199675334

Yeah, right.

To be fair, though, I know a lot of these people are individuals with rich and varying personalities. And I don't mean to sully them or their tastes as something so negative. Rather, these people should be able to reason and grow away from this.