One of the most iconic images of the 20th and 21st centuries is a "We Can Do It" poster created by J. Howard Miller During World War II, men had to leave their jobs and country to fight in Europe. While the men were gone, women had to take on jobs and support their families and their country's economy was inspired by a photograph of Naomi Parker Fraley - a young woman with a beautiful red and white polka-dotted bandana working in a factory in Alameda, California, in 1942. The poster shows a woman resembling Naomi raising her arm and shows off his biceps on a bright yellow background with a phrase “We can do it”. This article explains why this image is iconic, what it means, and what its meaning or value is to public culture. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't". Be Banned'? Get an original essay As Hariman and Lucaites (2007, 27-29) describe in their article, iconic images are images that refer to something widely distributed in all media formats and represent universal emotions and meanings, are recognizable and understood as a representation of an important historical event. This image fits this description perfectly because "We Can Do It" is extremely well known and shared in a variety of media, it has a simple message that is understood by everyone and the movement of which this image becomes one of the symbols is widely supported and included. The background of the image influenced its meaning and original message. As Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright (2009, 9) stated in Practices of Looking: “a single image can serve a multitude of purposes, appear in a range of contexts, and mean different things to different people.” After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government urged military manufacturers to produce more weapons and other military products (Herold, 2018). However, the climate in large factories was really tense due to conflicts between workers and the union administration (Herold, 2018). For this reason, a campaign was launched to soften the conflict and raise the spirit and morale of all workers in the factory (Herold, 2018). In 1942, the Westinghouse Electric Company decided to create a series of propaganda posters to boost the morale of all the factory workers and encourage them to continue their hard work (Herold, 2018). More posters like "Together we can do it!" and “Keep shooting!” were created at that time similar to “We Can Do it” (Rubenstein et al., 1998). Only in the 1980s did the poster gain enormous popularity among the general public and become a symbol of the feminist movement. Nowadays the poster has been remade and parodied several times. Many advertisers still use this image with some modifications to promote their products. The image appeared on clothing, vending machines, mugs, refrigerator magnets, pins, and other similar items and products. The image was also used by the Clorox company to advertise their household cleaners (Wade, 2007). The image also appeared in the film Captain America: The First Avenger (Landekic and Albinson, 2011). It was also used during political campaigns with Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, and Julia Gillard (Herold, 2018). There was also another problem with the poster. The person depicted on the poster was a mystery until a few years ago. At first everyone was sure that the woman on the cover was Geraldine Hoff Doyle, but later, after a short investigation, it became apparent that the real woman in the photo is Naomi Parker Fraley (Fox, 2018). This shows how.