Pin-up model
- "Pinup" redirects here. For other uses of pinup or pin-up, see Pin-up (disambiguation). For the 1944 film, see Pin Up Girl (film).
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A pin-up girl, also known as a pin-up model, is a model whose mass-produced pictures see wide appeal as popular culture. Pin-ups are intended for informal display, e.g. meant to be "pinned-up" on a wall. Pin-up girls may be glamour models, fashion models, or actresses.
The term pin-up may also refer to drawings, paintings, and other illustrations done in emulation of these photos (see the list of pinup artists). The term was first attested to in English in 1941;[1] however, the practice is documented back at least to the 1890s.
The pin-up images could be cut out of magazines or newspapers, or be from postcard or chromo-lithographs, and so on. Such photos often appear on calendars, which are meant to be pinned up anyway. Later, posters of pin-up girls were mass-produced and became an instant hit.
Overview
Many pin-ups were photographs of celebrities who were considered sex symbols. One of the most popular early pin-up girls was Betty Grable, whose poster was ubiquitous in the lockers of G.I.s during World War II. Other pin-ups were artwork, often depicting idealized versions of what some thought a particularly beautiful or attractive woman should look like. An early example of the latter type was the Gibson girl, drawn by Charles Dana Gibson. The genre also gave rise to several well-known artists specializing in the field, including Earle K. Bergey, Enoch Bolles, Alberto Vargas, Gil Elvgren, George Petty, and numerous notable artists, such as Rolf Armstrong and Art Frahm.
Notable contemporary pin-up artists include Elias Chatzoudis, Armando Huerta, and Chuck Bauman. Another is popular Pin-Up Artist Olivia De Berardinis who is most famous for her Pin-Up Art of Bettie Page and her pieces in the earlier editions of Playboy.
“To understand both the complicated identity and the subversive nature of the nineteenth-century actress, one must also understand that the era’s views on women’s potential were inextricably ties to their sexuality, which in turn was tie to their level of visibility in the public sphere: regardless of race, class or background, it was generally assumed that the more public the woman, the more “public,” or available, her sexuality.”[2]
It was conscious contemporaneity and sexual self-awareness on stage that burlesque performers had reached a new age. With this increasing sense of awareness, burlesque actresses/performers used photographic advertisement as business cards to promote themselves and raise their popularity.[3] These adverts and/or business cards could often been found in almost every green room, pinned-up or stuck into “frames of the looking-glasses, in the joints of the gas-burners, and sometimes lying on-top of the sacred cast-case itself.”[3] Understanding the power of photographic advertisements to promote their shows, burlesque women self-constructed their identity to make themselves visible. Being recognized not only within the theater itself but as well outside, challenged the conventions of women’s place and women’s potential in the public sphere.[4]
From mid. 19th century burlesque performers and their adverts/business card cresting their photo to early 20th century photographed oriental dancers in which were highly desired to female caricatures performing ‘ordinary’ things, like the Gibson Girl became popular. The ‘ordinariness’ that these drawn pictures suggested, was erotic. The fact that, unlike the photographed actresses and dancers generations earlier, fantasy gave artists the freedom to draw women, in particular the Gibson Girl in many different ways he would like.[5] This is where the popular “pin-up girls” from the 1920’s era begins.
“Because the New Woman was symbolic of her new ideas about her sex, it was inevitable that she would also come to symbolize new ideas about sexuality.”[6] Being sexually fantasized, famous actresses in early 20th century film were both drawn and photographed and put on posters to be sold for personal entertainment.[7] The 1932 Esquire ‘men’s’ magazine featured many drawings like the Gibson Girl and “girlie” cartoons but most was most famous for their Varga girls. Varga girls were the next pin-up girls. Prior to WWII they were praised for their beauty and less focus was on their sexuality. However, during the war the drawings transformed into women playing dress-up in military drag and drawn in seductive manners, like that of a child playing with a doll.[8] The Varga girls became so popular that from 1942-1946, due to a high volume of military demand, “9 million copies of the magazine-without adverts and free of charge was sent to American troops stationed overseas and in domestic bases.”[9] Nevertheless, not one picture could be as significant or memorable as the Varga Girls nose art of the WWII bombers; not seen as prostitutes but patriots for good luck.[10]
Feminism and the pin-up
"As sexual images of women multiplied in the popular culture, women participated actively in constructing arguments to endorse as well as protest them."[11]
In the early 20th century, where these drawings of women helped define certain body images such as being clean, being healthy, being wholesome and enjoyed by both "normal" men and women as time progressed it is no surprise that these images changed from respectable to illicit.[12]
As early as 1869, women have been supporters and protestors of the pin-up. Women supporters of early pin-up content considered these to be a “positive post-Victorian rejection of bodily shame and a healthy respect for female beauty.”[13] On the contrary, women protesters argued that these images were corrupting societal morality and saw these public sexual displays of women as lowering the standards of womanhood, destroying their dignity and harmful to both women and young adolescence.[13]
Notable pin-up girls
Other kinds of pin-ups
In comic books, a pin-up is simply a full-page piece of artwork, most often without dialogue, that showcases a character, group of characters, or significant event, published within an issue, rather than made available by itself as a poster.
In professionally published fan magazines for films and television series, a posed photograph of actors or actresses from the subject matter, but which might also showcase specific scenes from the subject matter in photograph form (called stills) are occasionally called pin-ups. The label is very casual, though, as these types of fan media are more accurately described as posters.
Pin-ups are also referred to as "cheesecake", the male counterpart being "beefcake".
In professional wrestling, female superstar of the 1950s Mae Young modelled her in-ring look on the various pin-up girls of the time. Also, Rayna Von Tosh, of SHIMMER fame had a burlesque pin up gimmick.
See also
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References
- Notes
- ^ Ayto, John (2006). Movers and shakers: a chronology of words that shaped our age. Oxford University Press. p. 126. ISBN 0-19-861452-7.
- ^ Buszek, p.29
- ^ a b Buszek, p.43
- ^ Buszek, p.45
- ^ Buszek, p.95
- ^ Buszek, p.82
- ^ Carole S. Vance, ed. “Seeking Ectasy on the Battlefield: Danger and Pleasure in Nineteenth-Century Feminist Sexual Thought,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston: Routledge and K. Paul, 1984)
- ^ Buszek, p.209
- ^ Buszek, p.210
- ^ Costello, John (1985). Virtue Under Fire: How World War II Changed Our social and Sexual Attitudes. Boston: Little Brown. pp. 144–155. ISBN 0-316-73968-5.
- ^ Meyerowitz, p.9
- ^ Ross, Andrew (1989). No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. p. 61. ISBN 0-415-90036-0.
- ^ a b Meyerowitz, p.10
- Bibliography
- Buszek, Maria Elena (2006). Pin-up grrrls: feminism, sexuality, popular culture. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3746-0.
- Meyerowitz, Joanne. “Women, Cheesecake, and Borderline Material”, Journal of Women’s History, Vol 8, No 3 (1996)
- Gary L. Bloomfield, Stacie L. Shain, Arlen C. Davidson, "Duty, Honor, Applause: America's Entertainers in World War II", 2004, ISBN 1592285503. Pages 400-405 discuss pinup girls and nose art.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- 50 Years of American Pin-Ups - slideshow by The Week UK
- The Pin Up - The Pin Up Magazine for more information on Pin Up Girls from 2000s