Radium Girls

By Karol Kovalovich Weaver

Cy.’s Radium Girls tells the story of a group of twentieth-century American working-class women who suffered from and died as a result of radium poisoning. The women worked in a watch factory painting the numbers on watch faces. Unaware of the dangers of the radioactive paint, the women prepped their brushes with their tongues. In addition, they used the paint as nail polish, applied it as makeup, and decorated their dresses with it. Ultimately, they developed radium poisoning, experiencing tooth loss, miscarriages, pain, the inability to walk, and death. Facing physical, emotional, and economic hardships, the women joined together and sued the company that failed to inform them of the dangers of working with the radioactive paint. Their victory insured that their families would be taken care of and that if future workers confront occupational hazards, the companies for whom they worked would be held liable. Author and illustrator Cy. does an outstanding job connecting the occupational hazards the women faced to other hurdles with which they dealt. The color palette, the cover’s texture, and full-page images complement the author’s written narrative. Although Radium Girls is about the tragic experiences of twentieth-century workers, the humanity and the courage of the women render their story inspirational and timeless.

Radium Girls recounts the occupational dangers and the social and cultural obstacles that the women encountered. Due to the radioactive paint that they used, the women developed radium poisoning. Cy. provides clues to the women’s physical disintegration over the course of the second half of the book. There are repeated references to tooth aches. A woman’s happy news about her pregnancy is followed by images of her miscarriage. Her pained, open-mouthed cry of “My baby!” reveals several missing teeth (88). By the end of the text, several women no longer appear—they’re dead; other women sit weakly in wheelchairs, their faces bandaged and disfigured. In addition to the mortal dangers the women encountered, they confronted everyday double standards. While the women worked without safety standards or protective equipment, the men who labored in the same company’s lab donned face masks. At the beach, a police officer threatened to fine one of the women because of the short length of her bathing suit; meanwhile, the men are shirtless. The indecency attributed to the woman foreshadows the rumors of sexual promiscuity ascribed to one of the women who died of radium poisoning and whose death is reported to have resulted from syphilis. Despite the physical vulnerability brought on by her health challenges, one woman is subjected to domestic violence by her husband whose behavior she excuses because of her inability to “keep house, or take care of the children anymore” (107). Cy. shows that exposure to radium was one of many hazards women faced.

Cy.’s artistic choices, especially the color palette, the cover’s texture and features, and the full-page images, deepen the written narrative. The color palette, specifically the use of radium green, corresponds to the book’s topic. Due to the contrast between radium green and dark violet, some pages appear to glow. Eerily and beautifully, the title, the women’s faces, and the numbers on the watch faces do glow on the textured and phosphorescent front and back covers. In the dark, the women’s laughing and happy faces become skeletal and ghoulish. Seemingly inspired by Art Deco and Cubism, Cy. includes beautiful and haunting full-page images of the women. Sadly, the placement of these images in the text leads the reader to conclude that they have died, already dead from the radium poisoning that will kill other women.

The Radium Girls are women we know—hard-working, happy, and hoping to have fun with lovers, family, and friends. They bickered, grumbled, and gossiped (130, 132). Like other women, they faced dangers and double-standards—occupational, social, and sexual. Courageous and strong, they fought for themselves, their loved ones, and for the future. Cy.’s book is a beautiful memorial to them.

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Karol Kovalovich Weaver is a professor of history at Susquehanna University. She teaches US history and the history of medicine. Her research focuses on the history of healers and medical caregivers. She is the author of two books, Medical Revolutionaries: The Enslaved Healers of Eighteenth-Century Saint Domingue (University of Illinois Press) and Medical Caregiving and Identity in Pennsylvania’s A