Selected pictures list
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/1
A photo of two maiko (apprentice geisha), with the typical make-up clearly visible, leaving portions of the nape uncovered. This is done to accentuate what is a traditionally erotic area. The white face make-up is supposed to resemble a mask, and a line of bare skin around the hairline helps create that illusion. Established geisha generally wear full white face makeup characteristic of maiko only during special performances.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/2
J. Howard Miller's poster for Westinghouse, entitled "We Can Do It!", is often associated in modern times with Rosie the Riveter, a cultural icon of the United States. The poster was not widely seen during World War II, nor was it connected to Rosie the Riveter. It was displayed only in Westinghouse factories for two weeks in early 1943, shown to female and male workers to increase worker morale and reduce labor problems for management. After it was rediscovered in 1982, the poster soon became famous. It was credited with goals it never had during the war, such as the recruitment of women workers. Modern viewers see it as a symbol of feminist solidarity, an American icon of feminism.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/3
Charlotte Corday was a poor French aristocrat who supported the Girondists during the French Revolution. She single-handedly assassinated Jean-Paul Marat, a Jacobin journalist, with a knife in 1793. Although she was beheaded four days afterwards and the Reign of Terror continued for another year, she was later seen as a heroine who gave her life to rid her country of a monster. The assassination is depicted in this 1860 painting.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/4
Mrs. Bill Stagg of Pie Town, New Mexico with her embroidered patchwork quilt that displays all 48 (at the time) United States state flowers and birds, October 1940. Quilting was a very popular early American pastime, particularly in the Midwest, where quilting circles were a common social pastime for women. Annual town fairs generally included a quilting bee, to award excellence in quilting. Handmade quilts were a very common wedding gift for young couples, and were often mentioned specifically in wills due to their sentimental significance.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/5
A photochrom of an elderly Irish woman using a spinning wheel, a device for spinning thread or yarn from natural or human-made fibers. Manual spinning wheels were likely invented in the 13th century, replacing the earlier spindle and distaff, and remained in use until automated mass production techniques were invented in the Industrial Revolution. Hand-spinning remains a popular handicraft.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/6
A 1917 recruitment poster for women to join the United States Navy. In March 1917, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels realized that the Naval Reserve Act of 1916 used the word "yeoman" instead of "man" or "male", and allowed for the induction of "all persons who may be capable of performing special useful service for coastal defense." He began enlisting females as Yeoman (F), and in less than a month the Navy officially swore in Loretta Perfectus Walsh, the first female sailor in U.S. history. At the time they were popularly referred to as "yeomanettes" or even "yeowomen".
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/7
Female internees practicing calisthenics at Manzanar War Relocation Center, California. In 1943, Ansel Adams was invited to photograph the everyday life of the Japanese American internees in the camp. Adams' intent was to "show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, (…) had overcome the sense of defeat and despair by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment."
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/8
A 1942 aircraft worker at the Vega Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California. Women on the United States home front during World War II took on many manufacturing jobs in factories, producing munitions and materiel for the battlefront. This photo was one of a series intended to chronicle many aspects of war mobilization, including factories, railroads, aviation training and women employees.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/9
Rosie the Riveter was a name applied to thousands of women who replaced men in the factories on the United States home front during World War II. Here, a metal lathe operator machines parts for transport planes at the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation plant, Fort Worth, Texas.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/10
A portrait of Lillian Gish from 1921. Gish was one of the first female movie stars, called "The First Lady of the Silent Screen", starting in 1912 and continuing to appear in films until 1987. The American Film Institute named Gish 17th among the greatest female stars of all time and awarded her a Life Achievement Award, making her the only recipient who was a major figure in the silent era. Remarkably, she never won an Academy Award for her work, although she did receive a Special Academy Award in 1971.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/11
A portrait of Golda Meir from 1973, during her tenure as Prime Minister of Israel. She was the first (and, to date, only) female Prime Minister of Israel, and was the third female Prime Minister in the world, as well as one of the founders of the State of Israel. Born as Golda Mabovitz, she chose her Hebrew name "Meir" upon her appointment as Foreign Minister in 1956. As Prime Minister, Meir oversaw a tumultuous period in Israeli history, with the War of Attrition, Operation Wrath of God, and the Yom Kippur War, all happening during that time.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/12
Elizabeth II is the Queen regnant of sixteen independent states and their overseas territories and dependencies. Though she holds each crown and title separately and equally, she is resident in and most directly involved with the United Kingdom. She is currently the second longest serving head of state in the world.
The 16 countries of which she is Queen are known as Commonwealth realms, and their combined population is over 129 million. In practice she herself wields almost no political power in any of her realms.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/13
Mary of Teck was the queen consort of King George V as well as the Empress of India. Before her accession, she was successively Duchess of York, Duchess of Cornwall and Princess of Wales. By birth, she was a princess of Teck, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, with the style Her Serene Highness. To her family, she was informally known as May, after her birth month. Queen Mary was known for setting the tone of the British Royal Family, as a model of regal formality and propriety, especially during state occasions. She was the first Queen Consort to attend the coronation of her successors. Noted for superbly bejewelling herself for formal events, Queen Mary left a collection of jewels now considered priceless.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/14
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands with her daughter and successor Princess Juliana, circa 1914. Wilhelmina was queen regnant from 1890 to 1948, longer than any other Dutch monarch. Outside the Netherlands she is primarily remembered for her role in the Second World War, in which she proved to be a great inspiration to the Dutch resistance, as well as a prominent leader of the Dutch government in exile. Juliana became queen regnant in 1948 after her mother's abdication and ruled until her own abdication in 1980, succeeded by her daughter, Beatrix.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/15
Apa Tani tribal women, with traditional tattoos and bamboo nose ornaments in Hija village, Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Originally, this practice started because the women wanted to look unattractive to males from other tribes. Apa Tani women were considered to be the most beautiful among all the Arunachal tribes.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/16
An Adivasi (indigenous) woman from the Kutia Khond tribal group in the Indian state of Orissa. Khonds were known for their human sacrifices, which were intended to further the fertilization of the earth.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/17
A head-and-shoulders portrait of a Zuni girl with a pottery jar on her head, circa 1903. The Zuni are a Native American tribe, one of the Pueblo peoples, who live beside the Zuni River, in western New Mexico, United States. The Zuni language is unique and unrelated to the languages of the other Pueblo peoples. The Zuni continue to practice their traditional shamanistic religion with its regular ceremonies and dances and an independent mythology. Archaeological evidence shows they have lived in their present location for about 1,300 years.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/18
Migrant Mother, Dorothea Lange's 1936 photograph of Florence Owens Thompson and her daughters in Nipomo, California, became the most famous image of the Great Depression in the United States. It is one of the classic photographs of the 20th century, and is now an icon of resilience in the face of adversity. In the 1930s, the FSA employed several photographers to document the effects of the Great Depression on the population of America. Many of the photographs can also be seen as propaganda images to support the U.S. government's policy distributing support to the worst affected, poorer areas of the country.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/19
The "Maid of Orleans", Joan of Arc is a national heroine of France and a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. She helped inspire Charles VII's troops to retake most of his dynasty's former territories, which had been under English and Burgundian dominance during the Hundred Years' War. She later was convicted of heresy (overturned posthumously) and burnt at the stake at the age of nineteen. Pope Benedict XV canonized her on 16 May 1920 and she is now one of the most popular saints of the Catholic Church.
Shown here is a statue of Joan of Arc inside Notre-Dame de Paris, a Gothic cathedral in Paris, where she was beatified in 1909.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/20
Annie Oakley, a 19th century sharpshooter and exhibition shooter who performed as part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, demonstrates her rifle target skills in this 1894 film. Using a .22 caliber rifle at 90 feet (27 m), Oakley reputedly could split a playing card edge-on and put five or six more holes in it before it touched the ground.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/21
Maya Lin's original competition submission for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.. Originally designed as a student project at Yale University's School of Architecture in 1981, the memorial is a black granite wall, in the shape of a V, on which the names of American servicemen killed or missing in action from the Vietnam War are inscribed. The architect hoped that "these names, seemingly infinite in number, [would] convey the sense of overwhelming numbers, while unifying these individuals into a whole."
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/22
A Japanese weaver using a beater that is mounted from a notched pole and suspended overhead. Woodcut print by Yanagawa Shigenobu, 1825-1832.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/23
World War I recruitment poster for the newly formed Australian Red Cross asking nurses to participate in the war effort. Artwork by David Henry Souter.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/24
Sophie Blanchard (1778-1818) was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist. Napoleon Bonaparte named her "Aeronaut of the Official Festivals" ("Aéronaute des Fêtes Officielles") with responsibility for organising ballooning displays at major events, and may have also made her his Chief Air Minister of Ballooning, in which role she is reported to have drawn up plans for an aerial invasion of England. On the restoration of the monarchy in 1814 she performed for Louis XVIII, who named her "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration". She died in a ballooning accident four years later.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/25
Hélène Dutrieu in her airplane in 1911. Dutrieu was the fourth woman in the world to earn a pilot's license and possibly the first to carry passengers. She was the first woman to earn the French Legion of Honor for aviation. She was also world cycling champion, a stunt motorcyclist, an automobile racer, a wartime ambulance driver, and director of a military hospital.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/26
Mary Pickford (1892-1979) was an Academy Award-winning Canadian motion picture star. She was a co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute named Pickford 24th among the greatest female stars of all time.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/27
Irene Castle (1893-1969) was a ballroom dance pioneer, a silent film star, and a dress reformer. With her husband and partner Vernon Castle she popularized the fox trot and introduced several other ragtime dances. She initiated the trend for bobbed hair and shorter skirts. After her husband's death in 1918 she remained active as an actor and animal rights activist.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/28
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An actual "Rosie the Riveter" operating a hand drill in 1943 at Vultee-Nashville, Tennessee, working on an A-31 Vengeance bomber. Rosie the Riveter has been an important cultural icon in the United States since World War II, when many women assisted the war effort by entering the workforce to perform jobs left behind by men enlisted in the armed forces. It was during World War II that women contributed significantly to factory and construction jobs—typically associated with men—across the United States.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/29
A portrait of Queen Elizabeth I of England in her early 30s by Steven van der Meulen. Parliament and the public expected her to marry to continue the royal lineage. The large two meter tall painting was intended to emphasize her availability and made full use of the symbolism popular in Tudor England. The tapestry in the background features a royal crest to the left with an empty throne beneath it, representing the hope for future king (and therefore the queen's marriage). To the right of the tapestry is a scheme of ripe fruit and sweet flowers, echoing the queen's "ripeness" for matrimony. This theme is further reinforced by Queen Elizabeth holding a carnation, which was considered a symbol of marriage. Though she had many suitors, Queen Elizabeth would never marry, later being venerated as the "Virgin Queen".
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/30
A Bedouin woman in traditional attire, c. 1898-1914. Bedouin in the Sinai wore apparel modified for the desert environment, usually cotton, poplin, or sateen. Black was the preferred fabric color. Sinai and Negev Bedouin women used the same brightly colored embroidery cross-stitch used throughout Palestinian villages. Embroidery indicated a woman's marital status: blue for unmarried women and red for married women.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/31
Two Belgian women sell milk from a dogcart, c. 1890-1900. Peddlers played a significant historic role in supplying isolated populations diverse goods. Some carried their wares and others, as here, used a domesticated animal for transport. Early photochrom print.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/32
A young woman from Ramallah, c. 1898-1914. Until the 1940s, women of Palestine wore elaborate handcrafted garments. The creation and maintenance of these items played a significant role in their lives. A knowledgeable observer could determine a woman's village of origin and social status from her clothing. The circular band near this woman's forehead is a ring of coins made from a portion of her dowry money, and indicates that she is unmarried.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/33
Helen Keller (1880–1968) was a deafblind American author, political activist, and lecturer. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker. A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, she campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and socialism, as well as many other leftist causes.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/34
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Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) was an American anarchist writer and feminist, prolific in her opposition to the state, marriage, and the domination of religion in sexuality and women's lives. She began her activist career in the freethought movement, initially drawn to individualist anarchism but evolved through mutualism to an "anarchism without adjectives." Emma Goldman described her as "the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced".
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/35
The Kayan or Padaung are a group of the Karen people found in Myanmar and Thailand. They are known for a particular body modification, which consists of coiling lengths of brass around the neck of the women. The coils are first applied when the girls are about five years old, and the coil is replaced with longer coils as the weight of the brass pushes down the collar bone and compresses the rib cage, resulting in the appearance of a very long neck. The practice has seen a surge in recent years because the custom draws tourists who buy their handicrafts.
Portal:Feminism/Selected picture/36
Anna Bilińska (1854–1893) was a Polish Realist painter. Born in Zlatopil, she moved to Paris to study at the Académie Julian. Bilińska is one of the first Polish female artists to receive professional artistic education and critical acclaim. Her paintings include A Negress and At the Seashore. This self-portrait of Bilińska, wearing an apron and holding a bundle of brushes, was painted in oil on canvas in 1887 and is now in the collection of the National Museum in Kraków.