Problematic Pin-Ups
This story about 1950’s pin-up girl pictures came across my Google Reader shared items (sorry… I missed who shared it!) and left me thinking. From the site:
The pin-up paintings (and photographs, of course) were created by Gil Elvgren, one of America’s most notable pin-up artists. What you may not realize (we didn’t at first), is that the photographs all show the same model — Elvgren’s wife — though she appears with different haircuts, and obviously wearing every outfit under the sun. Pin-up girls were meant to be stylized, idealized versions of women, and we think it’s kind of sweet that Elvgren saw his own wife as the perfect model of the fantasy woman, and used her for the basis for so much of his art. Also, he’s lucky that she had such great legs. Just saying!
Here’s an example of the photograph of Elvgren’s wife (left) paired with the pin-up girl drawing (right):
There’s just something about this – besides the blatant objectification of women that comes with any pin-up girl anything – that rubs me the wrong way. Sure, it’s “kind of sweet” that Elvgren thought of his wife as beautiful and the ideal model for an idealized pin-up girl. But… why wouldn’t he? He married her, didn’t he? Shouldn’t husbands think of their wives as beautiful enough to be pin-up girls? Of course, you would hope so, and I know it isn’t always the case, but why do we automatically see a man who is attracted to his wife and go, “Awwwww! That’s wonderful!”? Shouldn’t that just be the standard and when men aren’t that way, shouldn’t we frown at that?
Not to mention that she may have been the perfect model, but Elvgren also saw fit to make a few minor adjustments from model to drawing. Here, he took a little off the butt and thighs, added a bit to the chest, enlarged the eyes and lips, pointed those toes in those shoes more than is probably humanly possible. I’m reminded of Dove Evolution, here! And that is anything but sweet!
I know these pictures came out of the 1950’s, but just because something is vintage doesn’t make it great. I know pin-up girls were supposed to be idealized versions of women, but haven’t we seen what idealized versions of women do to the self esteem of women and girls? Personally, I think these images are not to be celebrated, but rather critiqued, and I think we need to examine how far we’ve really come. Not as far as we’d like to think, unfortunately.
The post says all the models are the same woman and that it’s Elvgren’s wife. Not true.
The first 8 pictures are of Janet Rae, who was never married to Elvgren. She was his next-door neighbor, and did pose for many of Elvgren’s famous works, but his wife was Janet Cummins, who never modeled for Gil.
The last picture is of Myrna Hansen, who was Miss USA in 1953, and went on to a moderately successful career in movies and TV. She was never married to Elvgren, either.
It’s not hard to check your facts before posting something like this. Let’s take the time, next time.
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