Rosie the Riveter enjoys a rare day off to enjoy the beach in her Jantzen swim suit. Vintage ad 1943

1944 was a different kind of summer.

It was a sweltering July and along with most war-weary Americans, Rosie the Riveter needed a day off.

In the heat and stickiness of summer everybody was tired, dog tired, completely fed up with neckties, girdles, time clocks, cook stoves, typewriters, telephones, ration coupons, endless shortages and war work.

Americans were working overtime as never before.

Americans United

There was only one way to win the war and get the job done – each of us had to give everything whether it was on the home front or in a war plant making the ammunition and tools our men needed to win

Vintage Illustration Robert Riggse Saturday Evening Post 1944

WWII Man Shortage

As men left civilian jobs to join the armed forces, in their place marched in women, who were “carrying on” work that had to be done to keep America’s war program going at top speed. Doing tasks men considered unladylike such as tending furnaces in steel mills, working overtime on the riveting machines and welding hulls in shipyards.

Vintage Coca Cola ad 1944 “From sunny Calif. to the coast of Maine, faster and faster the ships go down the ways in the wartime shipbuilding program.

My family’s own Rosie the Riveter, my mothers cousin Rochelle – who would forever be known as Rosie  was in the thick of things working at the Brooklyn Naval Yards.

At the height of WWII, the Brooklyn Naval Yard was employing close to 71,000 workers on three shifts. Blue flashes from the arc welders torches were visible day and night. Shipbuilders were busy with the keels of battleships that would be outfitted there.

Rosie was always proud that she could claim she worked on the USS Missouri which was launched on January 1944. She got an extra thrill knowing that the Japanese signed the WWII surrender documents on the deck of the ship she helped build.

But that victorious moment was a full year away.

Like all Americans, Rosie’s frayed nerves had yet to recover from the nerve-racking anticipation of D Day, only a month earlier when everyone was in a constant state of jitters.

Now working day and night, there could be no letting down, no slacking until the peace was signed, until our men returned.

War weary Rosie was ready to ditch her grimy coveralls for a curve hugging new swimsuit.

At Ease

vintage illustration

For overworked Rosie the Riveter, the romance of the beach beckoned.

“But,” she would sigh to her gal pals, “what good was the beach without a beau to rub suntan oil on her or admire the curves of her swim suit?”

Rosie had learned to live with less butter, eggs, and meat, but it was the darn man shortage that drove her batty.

The absence of an entire generation of men between the ages of 17 and 30 left a lonely void.

Rosie couldn’t help wondering if they were not rationing love too.

Last Word in Swim Suits

Vintage Jantzen Swimsuit ad 1942 Photo by Hurrell

Rosie  knew she needed some ammunition to attract whatever available men were still around. Squirreling away a few extra dollars each week she decided to splurge on a new swimsuit.

In her summertime campaign to land romance she was glad she could still enlist the help of Jantzen.

The swim suit ads not only prompted you to be patriotic and “buy war  bonds today to be free to enjoy tomorrow” they reminded you “to make each moment something to remember because this was a different kind of summer”

Like most industries Jantzen had retooled to manufacture military items to support the war effort manufacturing sleeping bags, and gas mask carriers but   thankfully  some swimwear still rolled off their assembly lines.

Vintage Jantzen Swim Suit ad 1943

Luckily Macy’s  still stocked the new curve-allure Jantzen swimsuit advertised in Life Magazine that promised not only to give you “lines that were thrilling” but “make you the most radiant star of summers bright stage.”

Gazing in the three-way mirror her reflection made good on the promise. Rosie the Riveter dazzled.

Empowered by  the uplifting capability  of her new Jantzen bra, along with the heavenly slimming magic of Lastex fabric  , she was ready to catch the eye of any beach bound man!

Beach Bliss

This 1944 Jantzen ad clearly directed at war- weary worker. The copy reads: “Make something of your day off, your vacation or your leave, get a Jantzen and get out where there’s sea, and water and joy.”

With a sense of adventure she and her pals hopped into her pre-war De Soto and headed to the beach, having carefully saved her dearly rationed  gas allotment  so she could make the excursion to Jones Beach, a NY State Park on Long Island close by the hot pavement of Manhattan.

The crowded beach was a picture of muscular grace and bulging waistlines, of smooth tans and freckles, of sunburn oil,  and bathing suits which had obviously been in mothballs since the early 1920s

Vintage Jantzen ad 1942 Photograph by Hurrell

After 3 straight summers of crisis, war-weary Americans needed a little relief. So they undid their stays, let their hair down and dug their toes happily in the sand- without dignity, without care.

Stodgy newspapers filled with sobering war stories got put to good use. Folks folded the papers into triangles, fastened them at the corners and wore them as hats to keep off the summer sun. They spread them on beaches and covered them with frankfurters, potato salad, pickles and thermos bottles.

To a beach goer who could sit down and cool off and maybe have somebody bury him up to his chin in the sand, things weren’t nearly so bad as they seemed in the hot city and the war seemed far away.

Establishing her beachhead among the other brown backs on the  pristine white sand,  Rosie settled in  for a healthy burn.

So long pale face.

Hello Soldier

Vintage Jantzen swimsuit ad 1943

As the sun beat down hot and clear from overhead, the queerest of prickly feelings nipped at the back of her neck. It was as if someone were staring at her hard! She twisted and there suddenly like a mirage in a desert devoid of men, a dreamboat, trim in tailored trunks, seemed to appear out of thin air.

A soldier stationed at Manhattan beach, Rusty was a khaki Casanova who swept her off her feet.

The hot day sizzled with romance.

At the end of the day as the flag was lowered to the strains of the national anthem, Rosie joined many of the bathers picnickers and onlookers within hearing and stood at attention proudly  facing towards where the flag was being lowered.

As the last strain of the Star Spangled Banner played in the distance, Rusty bent his head and kissed her. She felt filled to the brim with little bubbles of happiness

This was indeed love!  It all added up…the starry eyes…the fireworks in the bloodstream…this was what the songs sing about…this is what little girls are made for…

…this was why she scrimped and saved to  buy a Jantzen suit !

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.