Golden Age of Pin-Up Women

The form of a woman is a work of art.  Artists of different mediums have known this fact for thousands of years.  I’ve only kept mental pictures of lovely starlets such as Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, and Mara Corday. 

Thankfully for the early to mid-20th Century, women were gaining a hold of their own sexuality and beginning to use it to great effect.  As a result the Pin-Up girl wasn’t a form of degrading women but a warning of the Sexual Revolution about to occur in the 1960’s (after the introduction of The Pill).  While in the first 60 years of the 20th Century women were supposed to be stay-at-home wives and mothers these were actually women that didn’t have control of their sexuality and those are the women that men wanted to control.  It’s the women who had control of their own sexuality that had the most independence and the most equality–within the realm of human sexuality but not necessarily within the social and cultural realm.  However, it is the Sexual Revolution that ushers in more immediate change in the social and cultural realm.  While Feminism has been around since before the 20th Century, it is sex that is actually the key that opens the door to help propel Feminist ideals.  That is not to say Feminism is based on human sexuality, that is to simply say that human sexuality is a tool used to help bring about reaction (if not a small change) in ideology.

With that said, for any artist beauty is not just the shape of the woman, but the attitude she exudes in her eyes or expression or pose.  It is an intangible beauty that cancels any male-dominated ideologies of women.  While women wrote of women rights in America back in the early 1800’s, it is sexuality that actually helps get the male-dominated culture’s attention. Look at Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and the reaction it had in American society: the book was banned, her writing career pretty much ended, and almost successfully buried and forgotten in history until the Feminist Movement of the 1970’s.  Sexuality can bring about reaction, but not necessarily change. 

A perfect example of how modern photography and models “get” what I speak of here is a model who does Pin-Up photos [name with held].  She and many other models aren’t exclusive models for the Pin-Up hayday of the 1940’s and 1950’s, as such Golden Age Pin-Up’s is now considered fetish.  Even so, models have succeeded in keeping such Pin-Up culture alive and not forgotten.  Sure, I wasn’t even born until the later part of the 20th Century so how would I know anything about Pin-Up’s and that is exactly why Roy Varga’s work is all the more important: keep a part of American culture alive as this is a positive aspect of how women’s equality evolved.

Certainly the reader will see that Pin-Up’s did not mean modern-day pornography.  This is indeed art: notice the standout colors and the mystery captured.  Roy Varga, a great photographer in his own right, creates many of the Pin-Up poses that do capture what the Pin-Up Age was all about.  This is proven in the many photos he has taken of Natalie Minx and other (non-stuck up) models in Pin-Up poses.  Hopefully successful photographer Scott Church can find the time to dedicate a book to Pin-Up’s.  There have been rushed or half-done previous attempts at such books or websites emulating the Golden Age of Pin-Up’s but those fail to capture the once entrancing essence of the Age.  The capturing of the Golden Age of Pin-Up Women is not dead nor forgotten. 

Cherry Club is also on myspace but the real Pin-Up’s are difficult to find and is hit-and-miss at best.  SheelyBomb is perhaps the best one on that site but not a perfect example of Pin-Up’s.  An example of how Golden Age of Pin-Up’s isn’t captured would be Penny d’Mented: she is pretty in her own right but the Cherry Club Pin-Up poses mock the Golden Age instead of pay tribute to it. The photography is to blame on that point. For the most part, mention of Natalie Minx has been removed.