rogues and sensuals (although they usually leave something to the imagination), pin-ups make many of us think about the era surrounding the Segunda Guerra Mundial. But in reality, the pin-up even predates World War I. And, curiously, it was produced thanks to the bicycle.
Women on bikes meant more than just reduced commute time; it ushered in an era where women no longer needed a man's help to get from point A to point B.
But there was a problem: the composition of the bike it didn't make it (at all) easier to wear for XNUMXth-century women, who typically wore floor-length dresses and skirts.
Because of this, women began to wear more functional and fitted pants, inevitably highlighting the shapes that their skirts once hid.
While ministers and doctors campaigned against cycling under the pretext of safety, women, according to these experts, could damage their fragile internal structure (as well as the possibility of seat friction causing arousal) if they rode, but the The women's suffrage movement embraced the freedoms that the new mode of transportation afforded them.
In 1895, Life magazine illustrator Charles Dana Gibson forever changed the future of women's fashion with images of what he saw as the embodiment of the ideal. female of beauty.
Depictions of well-endowed women with hourglass figures and full lips became known as the gibson girl, which Gibson considered the combination of thousands of American girls.
The images would run in the pages of Life magazine for the next 20 years and inspire countless imitators.
As printing technology advanced, more and more magazines featured images of this unattainable idealistic beauty. For the first time in the United States, men had within easy reach of a source of boobs easily attainable feminine.
By the end of the 1903th century, the use of the calendar had spread to advertising. While the first schedule with George Washington failed to get the markets clamoring for more, the concept still held great promise. The birth in XNUMX of the “calendar girl”, Cosette, would prove it.
What would become the pin-up family began to take shape in 1917, when President Wilson's administration created the Pictorial Advertising Division during World War I.
The division mobilized all the media in creating propaganda that would further the US war effort. After all, sex sells and in the early XNUMXth century the United States made it recruit as well.
When the men returned from the war, the women of the Roaring 20s were unwilling to give up the freedom they had gained during their husbands' absence. Combine this with the atmosphere of rebellion that helped define the Prohibition period and the increasingly revealing clothing, it reflected a society in constant openness.
The artists who shaped the calendars followed and helped shape these changes in dress and attitude: over time, pin-up girls became much more teasing and flirtatious.
The growing popularity of this art form inevitably faded into other media. Hollywood didn't take long on the trend, so soon movie executives began using sexually charged images to promote many of their movies.
World War II came around so they decided to use pin-ups on recruiting materials, posters and calendars promoting the purchase of war bonds.
Many consider this to be the "Golden Age" of pin-ups as thousands of images were commissioned to boost soldiers' morale while fighting abroad. His reach was powerful.
And now, as retro becomes a point of interest and inspiration for many, the popularity of pin-ups is on the rise again, which is simply fascinating.
