History of Pinup

Introduction

She's risqué but never explicit. She's flirtatious but fiercely independent. She's erotic but always safe for work, a welcome sight for your teenage cousin and prudish mother alike. She's the pin-up girl, an all natural American sweetheart created to win the adoration across the country.

With rosy cheeks, bouncy curls, hourglass figure and penchant for thematic clothes are pretty much a dead giveaway.  It's a peculiar journey, one that overlaps with both women's liberation and women's objectification along the way. 

1889: The First Calendar 

By Rolf Armstrong (c) Brown & Bigelow, via Taschen Books

Thomas Murphy and Edmond Osborne print the first calendar featuring ads beneath the images. The concept was inspired; calendars do guarantee an entire year of ad space. The first calendar, featuring an image of George Washington, and it unsurprisingly didn't do so hot. In fact, the calendar market didn't heat up until 1903 and the release of the first girl calendar, titled "Cosette."

1895: The Gibson Girl

Charles Dana Gibson, an illustrator for Life magazine, shook up women's fashion with his cover illustrations of bosomy women with hourglass torsos, dark piles of hair and full, luscious lips. Inspired in part by Gibson's wife and her family, this national icon became known as the Gibson Girl, a girl America loved, known for her simultaneous sensuality and independence. She was, in a sense, the first "dream girl," unattainable aside from pinning her photo up on your wall.

1920s: Those Roaring '20s

With their partners away at war, women in the 1920s had tasted freedom and weren't willing to let it go. The jazz age brought with it shortened hems, spiked illegal alcohol, bobbed hair and a heightened sense of youthful rebellion. The free-spirited flapper generation was wild, free and eager to show some skin. Artists like Rolf Armstrong responded to the trend, dressing his pin-up girls all the more scantily as well.

1940s: Motivation
World War II captured the pinnacle of pin-ups, as carefully designed by the U.S. government to boost morale by presenting an all-American view of the sweetheart waiting for him -- the girls worth fighting for. These pin-up photos were found pasted inside barracks, hung in submarines, and tucked into soldiers' pockets

1940s: A time of War

World War II captured the pinnacle of pin-ups, as carefully designed by the U.S. government to boost morale by presenting an all-American view of the sweetheart waiting for him -- the girls worth fighting for. These pin-up photos were found pasted inside barracks, hung in submarines, and tucked into soldiers' pockets