Sometime you want to celebrate 100 pictures of Shane, and sometimes you want to celebrate looking femme, you know?
Let’s get started with this gallery of pin-up girls, from classic to modern:
Images of pin-up girls were called that because people pinned them to their walls. They sometimes featured models or actresses of the “sex-symbol” variety, i.e., Betty Grable, Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe, but also sometimes didn’t. Both classic pin-up girls and modern recreations of classic pin-up images tend to feature the following things:
+ Soft-looking, often curly, almost always retro-styled hair.
+ Garter belts and stockings.
+ Billowing dresses or skirts.
+ Lots of cleavage, of the front or back variety, because of strategic leaning or clothing readjustment.
+ “Tasteful” (i.e., tragic lack of) nudity.
+ Self-conscious awareness of the camera/gaze, or
+ No awareness of the camera/gaze, or
+ Making fun of the camera/gaze.
+ Underpants.
Sometimes, they would be old-school photoshopped. A lot of the time, they would be constructed for the hetero male gaze — but in a self-aware way suggesting complicity with that gaze. Modern recreations of pin-up poses are also usually constructed, but in a way that (can) make fun of that construction and some of the traditional gender roles implicit in it. Besides, who doesn’t love a 50s pin-up girl?
Excellent places to see more pin-ups include The Pin-Up Post, The Pin-Up Gal, Shameless Photography and iheartbrooklyngirls.
Another problem with early (and, frequently, modern) pin-ups was/is the lack of racial diversity. This slideshow, with 1950s pin-up girls and burlesque art, is a collection of some of the images that were out there:
You can also find lesbian vintage things at Vintage Lesbian, History Butch, Fuck Yeah Queer Vintage and Lez Get Historical.
Also, this week in sex:
+ Babeland has a new gender expression category for people interested in packing, chest binders, strap-ons/harnesses, stand-to-pee devices and recommended toys.
+ 57 years’ worth of Playboy magazines are now online.
+ Salon ran an article on “orgasmic meditation” that is mostly about women and orgasms and “the ‘upper left quadrant’ of the clitoris.”
+ Finally, it’s still May, so it’s still National Masturbation Month. You do you.
via xdyke
This is nothing about this post that I do not love.
well someone laughed out loud for a good minute once they understood the “you do you” joke and that person was not me, but it was an extremely close friend
Woo, smexy pin up girls! Awesome! That Dita Von Teese pic disturbs me, though. Where do her organs go?!?
Also, the vintage tumblrs made my day!
I always wonder what when I see Dita Von Teese. She is amazing, but there can’t be much room in there…
3rd row, 4th from left
4th row, all the way on the right
yes
I’m obsessed with pin-ups! Thank you for this
how did i not see this till now?! this is my freakin career!!! love this.
Ok maybe this is weird, but I saw this article on the cover of one of the Jet magazines in the (awesome and totally sexy) video. It’s from 1953. Check it out for gems like “the lesbians shared a common desire to find husbands- oddly enough, the more masculine the better” and “They have found a large number of women and men who are homosexual, yet are able to tolerate the opposite sex.”
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1030/1199098006_d2ffb325c9_o.jpg
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This seems like one of those odd spam comments, but I’ll just put this here anyway
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Here’s the link to donate to AS! http://www.autostraddle.com/donate-to-autostraddle-2/