From the 1920s onward, popular magazine, calendar, and advertising artists like Antonio Vargas, Gil Elvgren, Earl Moran, Zoe Mozert, and George Petty produced hundreds of “cheesecake” images of sleek, flawless, all-American femininity marked by the “tease” of blowing skirts and sheer fabric rather than by explicit nude display. Much of the residual glamour of Hollywood’s golden age certainly derives from the striking black and white images these photographers produced of screen celebrities like Jean Harlow, Louise Brooks, Greta Garbo, and Joan Crawford. While the pin-up has obvious precursors in naughty French postcards from the turn ofthe twentieth century, and late variants like the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the form is exemplified by the odd balance of eroticism, innocence, healthiness, and patriotism found in commercial images of women produced between the 1920s and 1960s. French-English dictionary, translator, and learning
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As the French film critic Andre Bazin later recognized, “A wartime product created for the benefit of the American soldiers swarming to a long exile at the four corners of the world, the pin-up girl soon became an industrial product, subject to well-fixed norms and as stable in quality as peanut butter or chewing gum.” By World War II, the Vargas girl and Hollywood pin-ups like Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth came to represent not only American femininity but the very values American soldiers were defending. Generated by the development and proliferation of inexpensive processes of photography, lithography, and color printing, the pin-up contributed to more democratic, and perhaps inevitably more vulgar, understandings of celebrity, voyeurism, consumption, and eroticism, closing the gap in taste and appreciation between classical nudes and burlesque showgirls. The term’s most evocative use recalls the drawn, painted, or photographed representations of idealized, all-American femininity produced in the decades surrounding World War II. Noun a very pretty girl who works as a photographer”s model A very pretty girl who works as a photographer”s model
Eventually, with the appearance of pubic hair and further investigations of all the classic pin-up had (barely) concealed, Playboy and other “men’s magazines” left little to the once-necessary erotic imagination. Playboy redefined the pin-up by shifting the earlier period’s emphasis on long legs to an all-but-exclusive fascination with large breasts. After the war, the classic, scantily clad pin-up continued to thrive until an underground tradition was brought into the mainstream in 1955 by Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine, which provided an entire “Playboy philosophy” of robust, healthy heterosexuality to justify its monthly inclusion of a nude Playmate at the heart of each issue.
- After the war, the classic, scantily clad pin-up continued to thrive until an underground tradition was brought into the mainstream in 1955 by Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine, which provided an entire “Playboy philosophy” of robust, healthy heterosexuality to justify its monthly inclusion of a nude Playmate at the heart of each issue.
- Although fetishistic photographs had been produced in Europe at an early stage in the medium’s development, in the United States a mail-order market for “kinky” images only developed much later.
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- By World War II, the Vargas girl and Hollywood pin-ups like Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth came to represent not only American femininity but the very values American soldiers were defending.
- Eventually, with the appearance of pubic hair and further investigations of all the classic pin-up had (barely) concealed, Playboy and other “men’s magazines” left little to the once-necessary erotic imagination.
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Find similar words to pin-up using the buttons below. Marketplace for millions of educator-created resources Over 500,000 expert-authored dictionary and thesaurus entries Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023 As a local boy and academy graduate, Mainoo, 19, is the pin-up boy for how the club wants to be represented. Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context.
- Another specialized market for pin-ups was also first addressed in Europe, where the photographs of nude boys taken by Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden in the Sicilian village of Taormina around the turn of the twentieth century circulated among homosexual collectors.
- In the United States, a number of studios mirroring Klaw’s Movie Star News marketed their images to homosexual consumers.
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- A very pretty girl who works as a photographer”s model
- As the French film critic Andre Bazin later recognized, “A wartime product created for the benefit of the American soldiers swarming to a long exile at the four corners of the world, the pin-up girl soon became an industrial product, subject to well-fixed norms and as stable in quality as peanut butter or chewing gum.”
Words Near Pin-up in the Dictionary
A pin-up girl is a model whose mass-produced images are widely displayed on posters, calendars, magazines, and other media intended for informal and public viewing. Pin-up girl images moved beyond simple posters to play significant roles in shaping popular culture, influencing fashion, beauty standards, and even feminist discourse on topics related to body image and sexual empowerment. The images, produced mainly for aesthetic enjoyment, often feature women in a variety of poses and outfits, sometimes with a playful or suggestive undertone. Because the period demanded secrecy and obfuscation, pin-ups of nude or loin-clothed young men were commonly sold to “physique” or “muscle-building” enthusiasts, but the erotic component of images produced by “beefcake” pioneers like Bruce of Los Angeles (Bruce Harry Bellas), Chicago’s Kris Studios, and most notably Bob Mizer’s Athletic Model Guild, through its regular catalog Physique Pictorial, was never very hidden. Although fetishistic photographs had been produced in Europe at an early stage in the medium’s development, in the United States a mail-order market for “kinky” images only developed much later.
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In the United States, a number of studios mirroring Klaw’s Movie Star News marketed their images to homosexual consumers. Another specialized market for pin-ups was also first addressed in Europe, where the photographs of nude boys taken by Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden in the Sicilian village of Taormina around the turn of the twentieth century circulated among homosexual collectors. In retrospect, Betty Page seemed the ideal pin-up of a period that produced both the McCarthy witchhunts and the Kinsey Reports on human sexuality. But for specialized tastes, alternatives to the Vargas girl and Hefner’s Playmates were also available. Playboy, by publishing an early nude photograph of Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe, had collapsed the distinction between “inno-cent” sexiness in mainstream “leg art” and a more surreptitious tradition of straightforward sexual imagery. Finally, against the widespread competition of explicit pornography in the mainstream market by the 1970s, Playboy held its relatively demure ground, maintaining an airbrushed glamour ignored by the more gynecological perspectives provided in subsequent magazines like Bob Guccione’s Penthouse and Larry Flynt’s Hustler.
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Spanish-English dictionary, translator, and learning English dictionary and learning for Spanish speakers The 22-year-old pin-up boy of Welsh rugby explaining to the world he has quit the sport with immediate effect to pursue a career in the NFL.
“The pin-up girl is the American occupation’s primary contribution to the art of the French.” — Simone de Beauvoir The era saw significant usage of these images, partly driven by the needs of soldiers during the war who sought comfort in such portrayals. Pin-up girls have historically been popular figures known for their alluring and often playful depiction, frequently characterized by clothing styles that emphasize attractiveness and sex appeal.
pin-up American Dictionary
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