Postcard:Women's Rights / Do I Get Your Vote?

First created in 1909, Rose O'Neill's immensely popular Kewpies lent their support to the Woman Suffrage Movement in the 1910s. This 1914 postcard depicts one Kewpie marching for suffrage, holding a sign reading "Votes for Women" and "Equality," with "Women Suffer" written subtly across the baby's sash. The top half of this novelty postcard folds down to create a stand for the Kewpie cutout. At a time when woman suffrage had gained the broad support of middle-class women, O'Neill helped popularize the movement's message, and her cherubic babies clearly helped take the bite out of what might otherwise be perceived as too radical an idea. Rose O'Neill (1874-1944) was part of a generation of female illustrators who came of age in the final stages of the Woman Suffrage Movement and worked with the National American Woman Suffrage Association to create widespread publicity for the cause. As an illustrator with talent and aspirations in more traditionally defined "fine art," O'Neill possessed a feminist perspective strengthened by her understanding that, as a woman, she would always have difficulty being taken seriously as an artist.