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'Rosie the Riveter' Dies

Obit

Geraldine Doyle was inspiration for poster.

Geraldine Doyle, the factory worker who inspired the famous Rosie the Riveter poster, died on Sunday at the age of 86. Doyle took a job at a metal factory at the age of 17 and was photographed there one day wearing a red and white polka-dot bandanna on her head. That photo ended up being the inspiration for the 1942 poster, in which a woman in a similar bandana makes a muscle beneath the caption “We Can Do It.” Rosie ended up making for a better inspiration than Doyle, who barely worked at the job for two weeks.

Read it at The Washington Post