Case Study 5.1: Dissecting a World War II Recruitment Poster

"We Can Do It!" — What a Single Image Argues

Few images from twentieth-century American visual culture are more reproduced than the wartime poster showing a young woman in a red-and-white polka-dot bandana, flexing her right arm, with the caption "We Can Do It!"

In the decades since the war, this image has become a symbol of feminist empowerment, adorning coffee mugs, t-shirts, academic syllabi, and political campaign materials. What is less commonly discussed is what the image was actually doing at the time it was created — and how the complete anatomy of the original message differs substantially from the contemporary uses of the image.

Background and Source

The image was created by J. Howard Miller for Westinghouse Electric in 1943, as part of an internal war production motivation campaign. It was displayed in Westinghouse plants for approximately two weeks, then removed. Its original target audience was the factory's existing workforce — most of whom, at that stage of the war, were women who had replaced men sent overseas.

Several features of the original context are analytically significant:

Source: Westinghouse Electric, a defense contractor. Interest: maximize war production output among current workers. The source's interest was not in women's equality or feminist political goals — it was in production efficiency and labor morale during wartime.

Original caption: "We Can Do It!" — not "Rosie the Riveter" (that name became associated with the image retroactively) and not a statement about gender equality. In context, "we" referred to the Westinghouse workforce collectively.

Original distribution: The poster was not widely distributed or publicly displayed. It was an internal communications artifact.

Five-Part Analysis of the Original Poster

Source: Westinghouse Electric internal communications department. Interest: labor morale, production output. Credibility: authority of the employer communicating to employees. Concealment: none in the original — but the commercial/production interest is not visible in the image itself.

Message content: The explicit message is volitional encouragement: "We Can Do It!" There is no explicit argument about gender equality, women's capacity, or social change. The image implies, through the flexed arm and assertive gaze, that the worker depicted is capable of demanding physical labor — a claim that would have been culturally contested in 1943. The implicit argument: women in this plant are capable and committed workers.

Emotional register: Pride and determination. The subject looks directly at the viewer with a confident, slightly challenging expression. The flexed arm is a traditional gesture of physical strength. The emotional effect is not fear (which many wartime posters used) but affirmative confidence — you (the viewer) have what it takes.

Implicit audience: The Westinghouse workforce, specifically women workers who may have felt uncertain about their physical competence for industrial work, or who faced skepticism from male coworkers, or who needed a morale boost in a demanding work environment. The poster assumes the audience has already accepted their role — it reinforces, rather than recruits.

Strategic omission: The labor context — wages, working conditions, whether women workers were paid equally to the men they replaced. The temporary nature of the expected arrangement (women were expected to leave factory jobs when men returned). The specific production pressures that motivated Westinghouse to commission the campaign. The absence of any content about what happens after the war.

The Message Transformation: 1943 to 1980s–Present

The image remained largely unknown for decades after the war. It was rediscovered in the 1980s and began to circulate as a feminist icon — a symbol of women's capacity and determination that transcended its original context.

This transformation is analytically fascinating because it illustrates how a propaganda message can be detached from its original source, interest, and audience and redeployed with entirely different meaning by a new set of communicators.

Re-sourced: The image is now deployed by feminist organizations, political campaigns, and commercial merchandise producers with no connection to Westinghouse or the wartime production context.

Re-messaged: The contemporary interpretation reads the flexed arm and determined expression as a statement about women's equality and resistance to gender-based limitations — an interpretation that goes substantially beyond the original "produce more" motivation.

Re-targeted: The contemporary implicit audience is people who endorse gender equality and find feminist imagery resonant — not factory workers being motivated to meet production quotas.

New strategic omissions: The commercial origin, the temporary wartime labor context, the absence of any actual feminist politics in the original production, and the pay inequity that characterized women's wartime factory work.

What This Case Teaches

The anatomy of a message changes when its deployment context changes. A message's meaning is not fixed in its visual content alone — it is a product of source, audience, context, and interest. The same image can be legitimate motivation for a wartime workforce, a feminist symbol, a commercial product, and a political campaign visual — with different analytical evaluations depending on who is deploying it, for what purpose, with what omissions.

Strategic omission operates across time. The contemporary deployment of the image omits the context that would complicate the inspirational reading — the labor exploitation, the temporariness, the commercial origin. This is not necessarily malicious, but it is an analytical reality.

The visual rhetoric of empowerment can be commercially appropriated. The coffee mug with "We Can Do It!" on it is making money for its producer by deploying feminist visual rhetoric. Whether this is propaganda, advertising, legitimate cultural expression, or some combination depends on analytical criteria this chapter has provided.

Discussion Questions

1. Apply all five framework components to the contemporary commercial use of the "We Can Do It!" image on merchandise (mugs, t-shirts, etc.). Does this use meet the working definition of propaganda? How does your analysis differ from the analysis of the original 1943 poster?

2. The original poster's source interest (wartime production) diverges substantially from the contemporary reinterpretation (feminist empowerment). Does this divergence undermine the contemporary use, or does the image's cultural resonance justify its reappropriation? Use specific criteria from the framework in your answer.

3. The strategic omission component reveals that the contemporary deployment of the image omits significant historical context. Is this a propaganda operation, a case of collective memory construction, or ordinary cultural evolution? What would distinguish these three possibilities?

4. Identify another historical image or symbol that has been "redeployed" with substantially different meaning in a later era. Apply the framework to both its original and contemporary deployments.