My daughter was doing a paper on women in the workforce during WWII earlier this week and we discovered that Rosie the Riveter, while the most famous, was only one of several characters created to encourage women to seek factory work. I always thought of Rosie as a standalone character like Uncle Sam or Johnny Canuck, but it was apparently more like a McDonaldland type set up. Don’t get me wrong, Rosie was definitely the Ronald of the bunch. Or, at the very least, Mayor McCheese. But it appears there was a whole Fry Guys worth of supporting cast.

In addition to Rosie, there was Wendy the Welder, Peggy the Painter, Sally the Shipbuilder and Abby Asbestos. Perhaps the least known of the bunch was Betsy the Big Boobed Bomb Builder as her image was used almost exclusively in Men’s Pulps and crude magazines they called Tijuana bibles. But my understanding is she was quite popular.


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