Pin-up girl

history

A pin-up girl or pin-up model is a model whose mass-produced pictures see wide appeal as pop culture. Pin-ups are intended for informal display. Pin-up girls are glamour models, fashion models, and actresses.

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; 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. They became an instant hit.

Many pin ups were photographs of celebrities who were considered sex symbols. One of the most popular early pin-up girls was Betty Grable. Her 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 Alberto Vargas, Gil Elvgren, and George Petty, and numerous lesser artists such as Art Frahm.

Famous pin-up girls

1910s and 1920s

  • Bebe Daniels

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

  • Twiggy

1970s

1980s

  • Tawny Kitaen
  • Kelly LeBrock

1990s

  • Anna Nicole Smith

2000s

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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 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.

See also

References

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home | This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. See full license termsIt uses material from the Wikipedia article "pin-up_girl ". | compliance | March 18th 2010