May 18, 2015 • 51 mins
During World War II, pinups were the ultimate American sex symbols. Cristen and Caroline discuss the history and evolution of pinups, female pinup artists and why some women consider pinup fashion and imagery empowering today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from House top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and it is pin Ups week
here on the podcast. That's right, celebrating lady bodies. Lady Bodies,
the original duck faces. Yeah. Interesting, interesting to to really
(00:27):
figure that out. Yeah, and also carroling the perils of
getting your dress snagged on any possible surface. Oh my god,
broom handles. Either could be a breeze. You could catch
it in a phone booth. For those of you who
don't know what that is, it's a It was a
glass housing of phones for before people had selves. Like
(00:47):
that doctor who watch him calls it right thing? Yeah,
I mean like a cat with an extra long tail
could be walking by who next thing? You know? There
your panties. It was. It was so hard to be
a man in the forties and fifties with your dress
always flying up. Yes, But the good thing is pin
ups always looked delighted to get a little bit of
a breeze on their thighs. You gotta air it out,
(01:11):
you gotta air it out, um and Carently this reminded
me of my college days when I wouldn't say that
I went through a pin up obsession, but I still
am not very good at apartment decoration, not my neck.
I am not a Martha Stewart. So I decided to
(01:36):
cover one of my living room walls with images from
atash and pin up calendar. So I was like, oh,
my gosh, she's ladies are cute and it's retro, and
this will cover a surface. And looking back, now, that's
an interesting choice that I've made from my wall decor. Yeah,
(01:58):
a lot of people would say, oh, Kristen, you were
identifying with the the obvious freedom and sense of fun
sexuality these women were enjoying. And other people would say, Kristen,
why are you buying into this oppressive, kind of empty
sense of femininity and female exploited sexuality. And then other
people would say, Kristen, why do you have such attackie
(02:21):
taste in wal decor. Here is a normal poster you get,
you know, like Monet or something. Well, just somebody should
have just given you the poster, the cat hanging from
the brand, the hanging there, but its tail is somehow
still like hooking up underneath a woman's dress, lifting it up.
You just can't get away from it, you can't. Um,
(02:43):
So there is a precise definition of what a pin
up is, even though most of us are probably familiar
with pin up imagery. Yeah, and Tashan's art of the
pin up by Diane Hansen. She defines a pin up
as a provocative but never explicit, image of an attractive woman,
created specifically for public display in a male environment. And so, Kristen,
(03:07):
you were already transgressing. I know what's wrong with you.
And I will tell you this. That college apartment that
I'm referring to was not a male environment at all.
All I did was killed goldfish and panic about my future.
I mean, accidentally kill goldfish. I'm not very good at keeping.
The two weren't linked exactly exactly, um. And it's not
(03:29):
just post their images. Pin ups were reproduced in their
heyday on calendars, lighters, playing cards, in Gooli magazines as well.
And I mean we still see pin up merch today too,
hugely popular, which is, you know, part of why we're
talking about it. It's still hugely popular. Um. And Kristen
(03:49):
and I found this great uh link of rip bus
feed that it had gifts showing the original model for
the pin up image and then the finished product. And
it's fascinating because not only is it fascinating to see
the original woman who modeled for all of these stilly poses,
because she literally was like, my butts in the air
and I'm holding my skirt up because the breeze is
(04:11):
coming or whatever. But it literally illustrates how the artist
shrunk her waist, stretched her legs, boosted her bust, you know,
gave her where she might have just been making like
a surprise dase, gave her those duck lips. Yeah. I mean,
this was the proto photoshop going on right now, and
(04:32):
that whole oops, I dropped my panties. More prurient kind
of post, the thing that you would see more in
girly magazines than on say a USO poster. That was
something that an illustrator named art Fram came up with.
It was a very particular kind of gimmick that was
then reproduced. And there's something apparently very appealing about that
(04:54):
moment of oh no, where all the elastic go. Well
that happened, but she never looks too too concerned. She's like, well,
I guess I'll just step on out, throw them away
and go about my day. Breeze doesn't come. It's like
the art equivalent of like a naked dream, you know,
because in your dream, in your naked you're like, maybe
(05:15):
if I just stand behind this light pole, like no
one will notice that I'm not wearing clothes, it's not
as big a deal as if you suddenly were completely
stark naked in public. Yeah. I mean that is part
of though, the delight of the pin up, because very
little phases her. It seems like, yeah, she's very innocent.
She she doesn't have a thought in that pretty shiny,
(05:37):
pale head. Well, let's talk a little bit about how
pin ups were conceived, and this is coming from Mary
Lenna Buseck, who we're going to cite a lot, not
only in this podcast, but she also gets a nod
in our follow up podcast on Betty Page, and also
again from Diane Hansen, who wrote the copy for Tashan's
(05:58):
The Art of the pin Up and Music. Though, really
traces the pin up back to the fifteenth century because
that's when we get the printing press, and this allows
for artistic reproductions. That makes this kind of imagery obviously
not nineteen forties pin up imagery, but just imagery in
(06:18):
general more accessible to poorer classes. Yeah, so instead of
going to a museum or you know, wherever, you could
have works of art hanging on your walls at home.
And then as we move through the centuries, technological advancements
obviously make it easier, cheaper, faster to create artistic reproductions
(06:40):
and get those into people's homes or you know, as
the case, maybe into their garages or break rooms wherever
they're hiding from their wives. Yeah, and alongside that too,
the rise of the middle class also creates this consumer
base for it. And one thing that Beausic talks about
is that in the nineteenth century, in particular, she says,
quote the female body is the ultimate signifier of modernity,
(07:06):
and this too in the nineteenth century. In eighteen eighty
nine is when Thomas Murphy and Edmund Osborne print the
first calendar featuring ads beneath the images. Because the thing
to remember about pin ups is that it really started
as advertising imagery. Yeah, look at my ad. Here's a
pretty girl and he's a calendar. Well, the pretty girl
(07:27):
who was on this first calendar was actually George Washington.
He his beautiful cheap bones. Um canful that it breezes
and catch his bleaches, lit those wooden teeth, read out
of his mouth. Um, and not shockingly, it didn't sell well.
The calendar market so to speak, didn't really heat up
until about nineteen o three with the release of the
first girl calendar, titled Cassette. And it makes sense that
(07:52):
because that sold so well, because these kinds of calendars
were intended for workplaces, and at this time workplaces were
i mean except in very specific kinds of side industries
like habadashows where you might have lady hat makers. Um,
there are still more exclusively male spaces. So you see
(08:15):
pin ups mostly in those kinds of break rooms of
your in the twenties and thirties via these calendars. Yeah,
and stepping back though to we've talked about the Gibson
Girl on the podcast before. She's sort of like the
proto pin up. And while she's technically more of a
what's called glamour art, so more of something you might
(08:37):
see in a fashion magazine as instead of just one
of those hidden away calendars, she definitely was the first
centerfold and she ended up being reproduced on postcards, plates, calendars, again,
the same things that we eventually see pin ups being
put on well. And she also is really instrumental in
(08:57):
terms of establishing this beauty ideal from fiction, really from
Charles Dana Gibson's mind of well, this is what a
beautiful woman looks like, and it trickles down all the
way to, for instance, her slender ankles that we talked
about in our Cankles podcast about how well the Gibson
girl is putting her ankles on display. And this is
(09:20):
a very new thing for fashion, so all of a sudden,
well they're slender, Well you better have some slender ankles.
And the Gibson Girl was mimicked in Chandler Christie's The
Christie Girl for the Century magazine. There was also Harrison
Fisher's Fisher Girl, which was included in Puck magazine and
(09:41):
also Cosmopolitan from around nineteen twelve to nineteen thirty two,
and all of these women are similarly beautiful and aloof yeah,
it's it's interesting to watch the timeline of how advertising
and the days media watching it shape women's appearance and
(10:01):
how women were expected to look, because I mean, it's
not like the Christie Girl. I'm looking at a picture,
it's not like the Christie Girl. Was particularly scandalous, you know.
She It was like, oh, well, you just have your
hair up in a bun. Well, it seems like in
a way, these gibs and girls and the Christie girls
were more not necessarily targeted. I don't think that it
(10:21):
was that specific, but they were more influential on women.
They had a wider women's audience that this is what
you need to look like, whereas pin ups were more
man it's just look at his name was brought over here. Well,
so what's kind of evolving After we have the lovely
Fisher girl and the prim and proper Christie girl in
(10:42):
the background, we evolved into the twenties and thirties where
we get girly mags which feature full color pin up
girls on the cover, and then you even get pulp
magazines that illustrate adventure, crime, detective, sci fi stories, again
all with you know, titillating pin up images. Yeah, and
I'm sure it coincides too with the fact that women
(11:03):
just in their day to day fashion wise are showing
more skin than ever before. Yeah. Um, So when it
comes so to who really popularized the pin up as
we think of it today, a lot of it has
to do with Esquire magazine. Esquire was all about some
pin ups. It was launched in three as a magazine
(11:24):
for affluent men who liked stylish clothes and sexy women
and has anything really changed? Um, And it commissioned artists
like George Petty to paint these idealized images of super
hot babes ak a pin ups. Yeah, and you'll also
be familiar with magazines like this doing this even today,
because you've got Vanity Fair, which features not paintings but
(11:50):
super super obviously airbrushed images of young Starlett's dressed in
the whole pin up gear, posed in a very stereotypical
pin up fashion, just as part of a little Q
and a feature off to the side on one page.
But anyway, the popularity of these pin up girls in
Esquire ended up spawning art cards that men and boys
collected and traded like baseball cards. But as this popularity
(12:14):
and sort of the commodification of it increases by Esquire
tells Petty, like, dude, you are asking for way too
much money, and so they chuck him and hire Peruvian
born Alberto Vargas, who was already sort of a not
a household name, but he was a big deal in
terms of painting images of women, because he was the
one behind the zig Feld Follies posters. Yeah, he was
(12:37):
their official painter um. But if you have heard of
the Varga Girls, you'll notice that it's not the Vargas
Girls because Esquire made him drop the s in his
name because they thought it sounded too possessive, which was
an interesting fact. And the first Varga girl that Esquire
(12:58):
prince is a blod on and she's hanging out on
the phone talking in a short black nightgown like you do,
like you do. And these Varga girls became mainstream propaganda,
particularly during World War Two, decorating not only bunkers and barracks,
but also fighter planes and warships. And one statistic that
(13:18):
we found said that from two to Esquire delivered six
million copies of its magazine to U. S troops overseas
and three million to the domestic military. Yeah, my grandfather
during World War Two, his airplane did not have a
sexy lady on it, although many of his friends planes did.
(13:40):
He instead just had it painted with the name Saucy
sal which was my grandmother. So he still had a
cute little name on it, but but no sexy lady
s And so my my mother Sally is Sally Jr.
So was your grandmother saucy? She was? She was very
sweet lady, but maybe she was saucy with him, maybe
(14:01):
had a saucy side, could be saucy sou I mean, obviously,
you know, and everybody knew about the popularity of these
Esquire images. At one point, comedian Bob Hope said, our
troops are ready to fight at the drop of an
Esquire And can we describe sort of the style of
the Varga girl, because she's very distinct. I mean, she
(14:23):
kind of has like a very particular kind of thing
going on. Yeah, it's it's sort of she's both cartoony
and photo realistic all at the same time, because I mean,
she's obviously incredibly buxom. She's posed in a very kind
of unnatural way. She's super leggy, super busty, super blonde,
(14:43):
or if she's a little more dangerous, maybe she's super brunette. Yeah.
And it's interesting too to see how pin ups played
into the military imagery as well, because you have pin
ups in sexy pin up military uniforms. You even have
one she's topless, but you know, she's covering her side
(15:05):
boob you can and she can only see her bare
back and she is pulling out she's presumably putting on
the uniform of a Women's Auxiliary Core. So it's sort
of sly in the implication that, yeah, these male soldiers
are definitely into these pin ups and they find it
(15:27):
patriotic and they're kind of fighting for her, and also it,
you know, gives them a little titilation in the trenches.
But women were aware of them too, so it was
also a way of saying, well, ladies, if you want
to be sexy and desirable, well look at this. Look
at this blonde putting on her women's auxilary xillary Core uniform.
(15:50):
That could be you too. Why does she use shirt
when she has a whack hat? It's totally fine, true,
I mean. And also, by the way, listeners, the hat
box for this whack Cat Whack being the Women's Army
Auxiliary Corps, is also beautifully detailed. It's like in this
lovely striped hat box, which you know, that's fun. Who
(16:12):
didn't like a hat box? Caroline? And it was this
beautiful image of this beautiful woman who was used to
help sell war bonds, recruit women into the war effort,
and even motivate soldiers sort of remind them what they're
fighting for. They're fighting for this blonde, all American busty babes,
you know, come home, to come home safely. To Yeah,
(16:34):
there were these stories throughout the war of dead soldiers
being found with Varga Girl pin ups on their persons
or these calendars. One one soldier died in combat and uh,
they found his Varga Girl calendar that he had used
also as sort of a diary as well. So, I
(16:56):
mean they were very much intertwined with World War two, um,
but on the home front at Esquire Vargas, Vargas' relationship
with the magazine sours and leaves in ninety six. In
ninety five, after the war, little magazine called Playboy launches. Yeah,
(17:19):
and also just a year after that, Esquire finally gets
in on the game itself and launches its own girly calendars.
So even though they had sort of helped launch this
whole pin up thing, they had not had their own
calendars up to this point. So once it's been a
thing for several years, and once Playboys on the scene,
they're like, oh, well, we should probably start exploiting images
of naked women too. Yeah, get on the ball, Esquire.
(17:42):
Come on. I don't know what they were waiting for.
But you know, we mentioned technology earlier, and as photo
printing technology improves throughout this period, the painted hand airbrushed
pin up gets retired. And you also have to take
into account that what's going on culturally in the context
of the time, and the fact that as more women
(18:02):
post war into the fifties, sixties, and seventies are entering
the workforce and starting to join up with second wave feminism,
pin ups are no longer an acceptable thing to have
in the workplace. You can't just be hanging up your
naked lady calendar where other ladies can see that. Yeah,
that was one thing. A pin up collector commented, saying,
(18:24):
before the seventies and those feminists, no one thought there
was anything wrong with these beautiful gals, the good old
days of sexual harassment, before there was even a term
for sexual harassment, Carolina Um. But when it comes to
the heyday of pin ups, before we leave them behind.
While Vargas does get a lot of the glory, there
(18:44):
were some notable female pin up artists at work that
we want to spotlight as well, who arguably created more
physically precise pin ups. And we're going to talk about
those ladies when we come right back from a quick break.
(19:07):
So Kristen mentioned the lady pin up painters who were
in the game and whether they were more precise with
their art, whether they were more precise in depicting a
woman's body, because you know, we already talked about how
the male artists would link in the legs, boost the bust,
all of that stuff, and so were these women doing
the same thing. While they certainly were presenting uh, sort
(19:32):
of an idealized version of a woman's body through their art,
they were creating sort of more anatomically correct figures. Yeah,
and they usually weren't as overtly sexy. They were very
beautiful and they were still sexy, but not as Vava
Ba Boom, perhaps as say of Varga girl. And this
(19:53):
is coming from a fantastic article by sociologist Lisa Wade,
and we saw it all the time on the podcast.
She wrote this over at Collectors Weekly, and she really
highlights three really successful Golden Age pin up painters. Pearl Fresh, Joyce,
Balanine and Zoe Mozart. And Zoe was probably the most
(20:16):
publicly visible of the three, both in terms of publicity
and also pin up art itself. And she was a character.
Well yeah, and the reason she was so visible is
because she herself was a pin up model, whether for
other artists or for her own art. And I think
that's so fascinating. She was teeny tiny, she was like
what four eleven. She was described as like an eight
(20:39):
five pound spitfire at one point. Um. But yeah, she
was incredibly interested in the female form, sometimes to the
point of body snarking. For instance, she ranked women movie
stars of the time. Her favorites included Ida Lopino, Gene Crane,
and Mary Anderson, but she was not as approving of
(21:00):
Veronica leg Yeah. No, she had like very specific criteria
for what she considered the perfect female body. And she
started out painting cosmetic ads and funny side note, used
her brother Bruce and her sister Marcia to model as couples,
and Bruce was her favorite lip model, so it all
(21:21):
these cosmetic ads started to women. If you know you
had like the disembodied lips, those were Bruce's lips. Getting
all glammed up. Yeah, there was an ad. It's it's
basically just the head. It's the painting of just a
woman's face and her hair, and she's got her head
tilted back to fully illustrate her full shiny lips. And yeah,
those full shiny lips belong to her. But I wonder
(21:43):
if she made him wear the lipstick. Do you think
he had to wear lipstick or do you think she
just kind of, Oh, she was good. I bet she um.
I bet he didn't have to wear the lipstick. But
maybe maybe he wanted to. He might have wanted to.
You know, we don't know that much about Bruce Mosert,
but we do know that Zoe blew up painting advertisements
(22:04):
and magazine covers. She quickly made a name for herself,
but when it came to Esquire, they passed her over
because at one point she thought that she was going
to be tapped to replace Vargas, but Escar was like, thanks,
but no thanks. But she did find steady work with
Brown and Bigelow, which was the nation's biggest calendar company.
Because remember these advertising calendars that usually were decorated with
(22:29):
pin ups were still very big business at the time,
and Not only did she create images for the calendars,
but she also created pin up mutoscope cards for World
War two troops. And I had to look up what
a mudscope was, and it's basically just imagine, like, you know,
how we had those little viewfinder clicky clickie viewfinders in
the eighties whatever they're called. They were red and they
(22:50):
had a little thing and you clicked them and it
went to the Yeah, exactly, Um, but yeah, mutoscope was
like a giant version of that. So instead of looking
moving images on a screen, you would have an individual experience.
So it was like a like an old school Google glass,
but just the only thing you could see was babes, right, okay,
(23:11):
Google babes, Google babes. Um well, Mozart After making lots
of Google babes moved to Hollywood and Paramount Pictures shot
a short film which I note that is a tongue twister.
Listeners A shot a short film with her for its
Unusual Occupation series, and this is when it talked about
(23:32):
how she not only with a zilli mos pin up
otics but also a model du Yeah. They had her
post in one of the images wearing the same little
costume that the woman in her painting was was wearing
and and she told somebody later like, well, I mean
that's great now, but I would never be able to
paint a painting in the way they posed me. That's
(23:53):
just ridiculous. And there's also a photograph of her painting
the image for the Jane russ A movie Outlaw, where
Jane Russell's reclined and she's got her like little like
western get up and she's holding a gun. Um. So
that's a pretty famous image, which you should also that's
another Google babe. Yeah, that's that's an yeah, actual Google
image babe. Right. Um, but yeah, Zoe was quoted as saying,
(24:17):
my whole life centered around men and art. Men were
easy to come by, and my paintings were my children.
So she was. She was because she was married what
four times? She was pretty dedicated to her art. So yeah.
And funnily enough, she also wished that mail pin ups
were a thing. She once said, it's a shame nobody
wanted to hang up pictures of beautiful men in their garages,
(24:40):
but business was business, and one had to meet the demand. Yeah.
I mean, if the ancient Greeks could sculpt a beautiful
athletic male nude. Why can't we have male pin up calendars? Well,
there were beefcake photos, but you know, moms of the
day weren't allowed to hang those up in the kitchen
(25:02):
in their in their inclusive space and their sphere. Um. Well,
moving to Pearl Fresh, she's kind of more of a
mysterious character when compared to Zoe, mostly because her paintings
didn't really hold up, not in terms of style but
just literally. Uh, she was creating these watercolors that was
that were difficult to reproduce on a large scale. Yeah,
(25:25):
and she was super technically skilled with her photo realism
and she was best known for that calendar art in
the nineteen fifties. And what's really notable about Pearl Fresh
is not only how beautiful these women are that she paints,
but also how athletic they are as well. Um, they're swimming,
(25:45):
their canoeing, they're playing tennis. As she had this one
particular aquatic series that did really well, and I thought
it was it's just interesting to see how she loved
to see her beautiful women in action. But yeah, that
a bottic series actually broke records for the publisher and
so people it's not like she was just painting it
for her own enjoyment. People really clamored to get these
(26:07):
athletic beauties. And then we have Joyce Valentine, who is
actually you've probably seen this. She's best known for the
Copper Tone Girl ad, for which her daughter modeled. Yeah,
and even though you know, everybody knows her as you know,
the copper Tone artist, and it helped put her on
the map. Ultimately later in life, it bummed her out
(26:32):
that that was her signature work because she said, quote
and it's just another baby ad kind of boring. Yeah, well,
not to mention people. For decades now, I've been banging
down her daughter's door to interview about having her butt show,
I know, being the copper Tone baby. Um. And Joyce also, though,
experienced career sexism early on, so she was very talented
(26:54):
from a young age. And at one point she enters
this art contest and wins, and the prize is a
scholar our ship to the Disney School for Animation. But
when the Disney rep gets a little Joyce on the
phone to say, hey, congratulations, let's plan your trip out here,
she's turned away once the representative realizes that she is
(27:16):
a she because Disney was like, oh wait, yeah, no,
we don't really allow girls to come out here and
do this. And if you want to learn more about that,
we have done a great podcast on the women behind Disney.
But yeah, she's basically told no, women have babies. You don't.
You're you're a poor investment. Um. But despite that, she
(27:40):
was well respected among other top named pin up artists,
particularly during her stint at Steven's Gross studio, where she
was part of what was called the sun Blow Circle,
named for Coca Santa creator hadn't sun Blow. She was
also super close pals with Gil Evgren, who's a fellow
pin up artist, and she and Elgrant even posed for
(28:02):
each other because Balentine was also big on Payton dudes. Yeah,
Zoe wasn't the only person who liked to paint dudes.
Well you know, I mean, I would imagine that, if
only for Variety's sake, you might want to paint a
fella every now and then. Um. But Ed Franklin, a
friend of hers, said she was an icon for a
(28:22):
woman in a man's world, and she kind of got
what was considered pigeonholed into advertising art because this was
the I mean earliest of the Mad Been Season's days
where everything was being done by hand. You don't have
photo technology to the point that you're having these, you know,
glossy images being reproduced. It's people like Joyce and Pearl
(28:46):
and Zoe who are painting the actual ad campaigns. And
so her work was featured in all sorts of advertisements
for big name companies including Coke Yeah, and her take,
Joyce's take in particular on the pin up was that
she said, the trick is to make a pin up flirtatious.
She said she always made sure, even for her stuff
(29:07):
that was featured in Esquire and Penthouse, she always made
sure to have clothes or at least a towel covering
up some of the lady bits because she says that
she wasn't into the whole quote unquote dirty thing that
Penthouse and Playboy we're doing at the time. Well, and
that kind of segues us into the next thing we
want to talk about, which is what do these incredibly
(29:31):
popular then and now images of these idealized women really
say about the time and also about us today in
female sexuality. Because pin Up Dealer, Marry and Old Phillips
on those three female pin up artists said, I think
they would consider themselves feminists and the thing is feminism,
(29:56):
as we mentioned earlier, was partly blamed for the demise
is of pin ups in the nineteen seventies, although more
in reality it probably had a lot more to do
with Playboy, more explicit pornography and photo reproductive technology. Um.
But there are arguments that pin up imagery both then
and today, in this kind of pin up nostalgia, like
(30:17):
what you're talking about earlier with the Vanity Fair photo spreads,
does have tinges of feminism embedded in it. Yeah. Um.
Maria Elena Buzak, who we mentioned earlier, does argue that
we culturally have a lot to learn from pin ups,
as pin up interpretation is one of the myriad ways,
(30:39):
she says, in which women have defined, politicized, and represented
their own sexuality in the public eye, and similarly, how
feminism has shaped women's sexuality. Yeah. And she wrote an
entire book about this called pin Up Girls. That's Girl
as in The Riot Girl, Girl with No Eye, feminism, sexuality,
and pop culture, and she argues that pin ups embrace
(31:03):
both the normative because these are ladies going about their
typical feminine business and the transgressive because it also shows
women being sexual, so it presents this taboo for mass
pop cultural consumption and views. That goes on to talk
about how the pin up girl occupies this sort of
(31:25):
gray area between portraiture, which is respectable and pornography, which
is obviously not respectable to most people. But she says
it's too pryan to ever be considered fine art, even
though the quality of the photo realistic portraiture people like
Pearl Fresh and her athletes were technically impeccable. Yeah, And
(31:47):
that's one thing that we haven't even touched on at all,
is how it's starting. I think it was in the
late eighties or early nineties when these pin up collectors
start coming out of the woodwork, and this question arises
of well is this art? Because it had never really
been considered art worthy of any kind of critique because
(32:08):
it was commercial and it was sexy. Right. Yeah, So
even when whether it was a woman like Zoe Mozart
or somebody like Vargas, even when they created a beautiful
image that was an oil painting, like a big scale painting,
that stuff was just thrown out with the garbage. On
a lot of cases because it was like, oh well, okay, great,
this is your rough draft. We've printed copies of it.
It made it into the calendar this year. We don't
(32:30):
need it anymore. And now though, because there is a
market for those originals, I mean, if you can get
your hands on a Vargas, then you're gonna you could
make a lot of money at an art auction. But
being of Vargas, so when we consider the pin ups
in World War Two and how they were used to
(32:51):
sell and propel the war effort. Speaking to The New
York Times, use that calls pin ups modern war goddesses. So,
I mean, that's a that's a pretty powerful kind of
statement to make. And in her book pin Up Girls
Music talks about how quote the Varga Girl presented the
American public with a hutu for unheard of combination of
(33:13):
conventional beauty, blatant sexuality, professional independence, and wholesome patriotism that
resembled a similar contradictory cocktail of attributes cultivated by young
women of the period. Yeah, so she was a bundle
of contradictions. She was wholesome, but having her dress lifted up,
you know, she was innocent and sort of vacant but
(33:36):
sexy and beautiful. Um, she could be used to advertise Schlitz,
or she could be used to inspire people to go
to war. Yeah, and there was in that New York
Times article. You know, they're talking to Beau Steck, who's
very raw rob about these pin ups, calling the modern
war goddesses. But then there was an older woman they
(33:57):
were talking to. Um, I forget if it was an
art creck or art historian, and she was saying, you know,
because she lived during this time when these pin ups
were everywhere. She was saying, I mean, but at the
same time, those were our idealized women. Those were the
the types of women that we strived to look like.
That was our standard. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know,
(34:19):
put yourself in the in the shoes of someone who's
living fifties sixty seventy years from now looking back at
like our Gucci ads and calling them, you know, revolutionary
and feminist and sexy, and it's like, well, it's it's
more complicated than that. It's not just feminist or not feminist,
sexy or not sexy, exploitive or not exploitative. Um, there's
(34:41):
there's a lot of gray area when it comes to
the philosophy behind what we ourselves are projecting onto these
pin up girls. Well, and there's definitely been in more
recent years this attempt at reclamation because there are a
number of women who are notly just drawn to the
pin up aesthetic um, but also find it very empowering.
(35:06):
And it's worth noting too that Lisa Wade in that
Collector's Weekly article reported that there are more female pin
up collectors than male. But they're even beyond just collecting images.
There are these now specialized pin up photography studios. There's
one here in Atlanta, um that are set up for
(35:28):
women to come and get dressed up and have these
super sexy vintagy photos taken of them. Yeah. Um. Sophie Spinnell,
who's the founder of San Francisco Shameless Photography, told the
Huffington Post that they're trying to create sexy, feminist, body
positive images, and she says the most important audience for
(35:48):
the Shameless pin up series is the models themselves. I
hope that when they look at these images they can
see how truly powerful, inspiring and sold deep beautiful they
really are. And it's it's sort of reclaiming a different
kind of femininity what the New York Times Style section
calls a hip femininity of not following along with the
(36:09):
cape mosses or the gazelles or whoever, like the tall,
skinny figure that is unattainable for so many people, especially
if you're just short. You're never gonna be nine ft tall.
But if that's what the image you grew up looking at,
it's almost like looking at the image of a pin
up model who already does have hips and a butt
and boobs. It's like, well, I have those things. We
(36:31):
can work with this. Yeah. I think that that's really
what resonates is that this modern day pin up revival,
even stretching into rockabilly culture and style, is very more
body friendly for a lot of women. Those styles are
incredibly flattering on more curvaceous frames. Yeah, And so I
(36:53):
mean I would argue that, I mean, there's a lot
of argument on the internet under this Huffington Post article
and for picular about whether pin up imagery is feminist
or not. And I think that if something empowers you,
it's none of my business whether it empowers you or not.
Good for you, good for you, not for me. That
whole quote that We've saided before on the podcast. Um,
(37:15):
but there is something nice about people being able to,
through whatever means, take pride in their own figures and
feel comfortable in their own skin. Yeah. And then New
York Time style piece also suggests that there is a
comfort too in the visual familiarity of those kinds of styles.
(37:37):
And it's understated sexuality. It's hyper feminine, but at the
same time it's not like extremely explicit you know you
have You're still you're still covered, but it's accenting your
feminine curves and not just displaying your skin. Well, it
seems to also it's it's coinciding with the Zoey Deschanel's
of the world, who are saying I can wear a
(37:58):
Peter Pan collar and still be a feminist. You know.
It's the it's the whole attitude of the Third Waivers
who are saying, no, I'm not rejecting femininity, I'm embracing
who I am and what I look like. And this
pin up culture just seems to be sort of parallel
to all that. But meanwhile, Andrea Dorkin not surprisingly is
(38:20):
having none of this pin up appreciation. So a little
bit of background the Spencer Art Museum at the University
of Kansas was gifted the massive esquire Um photo collection
containing so many of vargas Is pieces. And so they
(38:44):
you know, they get all this work, and they're all
these essays commissioned by the museum to analyze and critique
this pin up imagery and particularly these Varga girls and
kind of place them in art history. And dork In
is just so enraged by the entire thing. And and
(39:08):
she actually, I mean she's the one also who was
specifically commissioned to write a piece about this. This is
not her, just like off on the side saying no, no, no,
shaking her finger. So at one point, she writes, Vargas
is subject or object, to be more precise, is some lazy,
fetishistic view of white women, pale women, usually blonde. The
drawing itself delineates the boundaries of a non existence, a
(39:31):
white female nonentity. Yeah, basically saying that this is just
an empty vessel for us to pour all of our
masturbatory fantasies into. She goes on to say that this
is a sambo like representation of white women, and noting
the predominance of blonde hair. She does go so far
as to mention that Americans weren't the only ones during
(39:55):
World War Two to have these images that Germans had
their own equivalent to, and she goes so far as
to say that Germans and Americans are fighting for the
same arean image. Oh goodness, yeah. And so she concludes,
I don't know why Argus did these drawings except for
the money and hatred of women, including women of color.
So she sees no value in it whatsoever, to the
(40:18):
point of saying in the essay University of Kansas, you
didn't even have to accept these this donation, this gift,
but you took it anyway, and so you're playing into
the whole system um Andrew had worken though, for those
of you who aren't familiar with her, is has been
staunchly anti pornography for years, so this is very much
(40:38):
in line with, you know, the rest of her body,
her broader body of work. But she does make a
really good point, particularly in terms of that idealization of
that usually blonde, white woman. I mean that that's the
thing that jumped out to me too while researching this
(40:59):
and thinking about all of those pin ups that were
on my wall. It was just it's all white women,
all of them. But it's it's not it's the furthest
thing from the truth to say that black pin ups
and black sexuality did not exist in media. Um, we
were looking at Sydney f Lewis, writing over at baby
(41:21):
center dot Com had a fascinating column about black pin
ups because she she starts off by talking about how
you know, she was just looking into it. You know,
we're there black pin ups. Maybe there was too much
uh exclusion from the industry based on race, So maybe
they weren't even permitted to to model or to you know,
(41:42):
be performers in burlesque shows like white women were. But
as she's doing her research and she comes across old
issues of Jet magazine in the fifties, she's like, oh, wait, no,
there's a bajillion of these beautiful, sexy women of color
doing the same time of modeling that white women were doing.
It's just that white people weren't consuming it, so it
(42:04):
didn't become part of a larger mainstream. Yeah. I mean
there was even the Jet Calendar, which had the very
saucy tagline score with a Jet mate every month. But
and again, very similar kinds of pin up posing. Um
in nineteen four, black photographer Howard Moorehead made an entire
photo essay called Gentlemen Prefer Bronze, celebrating the black pin up,
(42:29):
and Jim Lindeman, also writing about this over at Collector's Weekly,
talks about how, yes, these images existed, particularly in African
American publications like Jet Magazine, but they were more broadly
considered to be pornographic. They were more specialty because of
(42:51):
you know, all of all the things we've talked about
before on the podcast in terms of the hyper sexualization
of women of color for time immemorial, and that is
still a live and well during the mid century when
this is happening. So Lindaman writes, the nineteen sixty six
Pussycat calendar of black pinups is just like the white
pinup calendars found in gas stations, but this was produced
(43:14):
by pornographer Ruben Sturman rather than for example, your favorite
brand of gasoline additive. Because it's almost like the way
that black pin ups and uh, these images were treated.
It's almost like, oh, well, no, the blonde, white woman
who is essentially naked, if not you know, totally naked. Um.
(43:34):
Now that's that's a pure form of sexuality that's been
that's been used to inspire people to do great things,
whereas apparently, according to the way that these things are produced,
like well know, the black sexuality scary though, and that's
that's not for for consumption, for white consumption, right Like,
So so it's fine, and it's not going to be
behind a brown cover if it's in a jet magazine
(43:55):
because those are black people looking at that. So that's okay.
But if you're a white guy and you have uh,
you know, a black pinup calendar hanging up in your garage,
then whoa dude, you're incredibly deviant. What are you into? Oh?
Just beauty? Okay. So as vacant as that old school
(44:16):
pin up imagery might seem to be, I think we
can conclude Caroline that there are definitely layers to her.
There layers to that duck face. Yeah, what would you
tell your your college decorating self. Now, if you were
to walk into younger Christian's apartment and see those pin
ups on the wall. I mean I don't think I'd
freak out. I would just be like, oh man, you've
(44:38):
got to get out of this apartment. This department is
so sad. It was really like just the saddest apartment.
It had like one small window and just stained carpet.
It was the last college apartment that I lived in.
Um so we Honestly, the pin ups were the last
of my words at the time. Yeah, but I don't. Yeah,
(44:59):
I mean I can't. As we're going to talk about
in our next episode on Betty Page, I get to
align with trying to, you know, indow too much meaning
into these images too. Yeah, I mean they were made,
they were made to sell things, yeah, and they did.
(45:19):
But I do think it's really fascinating and want to
hear from listeners about, you know how this nostalgia for
pin ups that is very much alive and well today
and if there there is any kind of if there
are any kinds of conflicted feelings about that, or if
you love pin ups, let us know. Mom Stuff at
(45:40):
how stuff Works dot Com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast hashtag pinups week,
or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
messages to share with you when we come right back
from a quick break. Well, I have a letter here
from Jasmine about our Trophy Wives episode. She says when
(46:03):
I first read the title, I had an image in
my head that was completely different than the one you described.
I thought of my experience in college where both men
and women were looking for their picture perfect match. Where
the future lawyer meets the other future lawyer and they
get engaged days before graduation. She in turn becomes the
trophy wife, and that she no longer focuses on becoming
(46:24):
a lawyer, but instead the perfect housewife. She'll host all
the dinner parties and is a symbol that he has
it all, the perfect job and life at home. I
remember hearing women claim that they only came to college
to find a husband. Jasmine, I remember hearing that too.
She goes on to say, I was pleasantly surprised that
your episode touched on everything, but my original thought, it's
(46:47):
a really good example of how the trophy wife is
a stereotype we choose to see, but isn't really there.
Maybe people just marry the person they're compatible with and
we just have to put them into a category and
label them. Thanks for taking the time to go more
in depth on the topic. I really enjoy listening to
your podcast. Thanks, Jasmine. Well, I've got a letter here
from Julia about our Divorced Women podcast and her letters
(47:10):
a little bit long, but I want to read the
whole thing because she has some really important stuff to say,
so she writes, I love the podcast. I found the
Divorced Women episode very interesting, but I was disappointed that
you didn't really address the young divorce day. I was
in my late twenties when I got divorced in two
thousand and eight, after only three years of marriage. I
looked for resources to help me with what I found
(47:33):
to be a truly devastating event. But everything I found, books,
support groups, divorce care websites were geared towards separated and
divorced women and men with children, complicated legal and or
custody situations, and lots of assets they had to split.
I understand why this is, but it would have been
nice to not feel like a childless, divorced loser who
(47:54):
was totally alone. More disheartening, however, was that so many
people I knew didn't seem to take my divorce very seriously.
I was in a lot of pain, and some people
treated my marriage as a quote starter marriage. The reactions
seemed to be that I should have been able to
just brush myself off and start dating again, and because
I was young, it wasn't that big of a deal
to have my whole world turned upside down. The advice
(48:17):
I found online and in books mirrored what I was
hearing from friends and acquaintances. I had never heard of
starter marriages before, and I found some media resources that
suggested this was a new trend at the time. Young
people get married, tried out for a few years to
practice their relationship skills, then get divorced on a whim,
and later pursue a marriage that they intend to take seriously.
I would like to know where this idea came from.
(48:39):
Although I was the first person I knew to get
divorced in my twenties, as the years have passed, I've
witnessed more and more of my relatively young friends getting divorced,
and I can say for sure that none of them
did it on a whim. It's a painful, life altering process,
and I can't imagine that any of my friends would
have ever described their failed marriages as starter marriages. I
also want to share a theory of out why women
(49:00):
in heterosexual marriages file for divorce more often. Again, this
may apply largely to the younger crowd. But in my
case and in the cases of my divorced friends, the
wife always filed because the husband simply wouldn't do it.
Even when the husband was the one who wanted the
separation and wouldn't agree to work on the relationship, even
when he moved out, cut marital ties, was living with
another woman, etcetera, he would not file for divorce. These
(49:24):
men didn't want to be married, but they didn't seem
to want to be divorced either. The wife always had
to actually file the paperwork after waiting months for the
husband to do it. My theory is that men of
the younger generation are accustomed to women taking the initiative
in almost every aspect of the romantic and domestic relationships,
and they're willing to wait it out to avoid doing
the work. I guess that's a nice way of saying
(49:45):
that men are lazy. In my case, I believe it
was also because my ex husband wanted to be able
to tell people that I was the one who filed
in order to paint himself in a better light. Anyway,
keep up the good work, I'll keep listening. So while
I'm not going to endorse broadbrush stereotype that men are
lazy Julia, everything else I think is really important. We
(50:08):
didn't talk about the young divorces, and that's something that
I've observed as well among my friend circle of knowing
you know, seeing going to you know friends weddings, and
now knowing them uh in their new post divorce um
status is so more resources, it sounds like, are definitely needed,
(50:29):
and we also need to kill the myth of the
starter marriage. So curious to here from other folks who
might have experienced similar things to moms. Stuff at how
stuff works dot com is our email address, and again
for links to all of our social media as well
as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this
one with all of our links. If you want to
see more pics of those of our GA girls, head
(50:51):
on over to stuff mom Never Told You dot com
for more on this and that's of other topics. Is
it how staff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you from House top
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and it is pin Ups week
here on the podcast. That's right, celebrating lady bodies. Lady Bodies,
the original duck faces. Yeah. Interesting, interesting to to really
(00:27):
figure that out. Yeah, and also carroling the perils of
getting your dress snagged on any possible surface. Oh my god,
broom handles. Either could be a breeze. You could catch
it in a phone booth. For those of you who
don't know what that is, it's a It was a
glass housing of phones for before people had selves. Like
(00:47):
that doctor who watch him calls it right thing? Yeah,
I mean like a cat with an extra long tail
could be walking by who next thing? You know? There
your panties. It was. It was so hard to be
a man in the forties and fifties with your dress
always flying up. Yes, But the good thing is pin
ups always looked delighted to get a little bit of
a breeze on their thighs. You gotta air it out,
(01:11):
you gotta air it out, um and Carently this reminded
me of my college days when I wouldn't say that
I went through a pin up obsession, but I still
am not very good at apartment decoration, not my neck.
I am not a Martha Stewart. So I decided to
(01:36):
cover one of my living room walls with images from
atash and pin up calendar. So I was like, oh,
my gosh, she's ladies are cute and it's retro, and
this will cover a surface. And looking back, now, that's
an interesting choice that I've made from my wall decor. Yeah,
(01:58):
a lot of people would say, oh, Kristen, you were
identifying with the the obvious freedom and sense of fun
sexuality these women were enjoying. And other people would say, Kristen,
why are you buying into this oppressive, kind of empty
sense of femininity and female exploited sexuality. And then other
people would say, Kristen, why do you have such attackie
(02:21):
taste in wal decor. Here is a normal poster you get,
you know, like Monet or something. Well, just somebody should
have just given you the poster, the cat hanging from
the brand, the hanging there, but its tail is somehow
still like hooking up underneath a woman's dress, lifting it up.
You just can't get away from it, you can't. Um,
(02:43):
So there is a precise definition of what a pin
up is, even though most of us are probably familiar
with pin up imagery. Yeah, and Tashan's art of the
pin up by Diane Hansen. She defines a pin up
as a provocative but never explicit, image of an attractive woman,
created specifically for public display in a male environment. And so, Kristen,
(03:07):
you were already transgressing. I know what's wrong with you.
And I will tell you this. That college apartment that
I'm referring to was not a male environment at all.
All I did was killed goldfish and panic about my future.
I mean, accidentally kill goldfish. I'm not very good at keeping.
The two weren't linked exactly exactly, um. And it's not
(03:29):
just post their images. Pin ups were reproduced in their
heyday on calendars, lighters, playing cards, in Gooli magazines as well.
And I mean we still see pin up merch today too,
hugely popular, which is, you know, part of why we're
talking about it. It's still hugely popular. Um. And Kristen
(03:49):
and I found this great uh link of rip bus
feed that it had gifts showing the original model for
the pin up image and then the finished product. And
it's fascinating because not only is it fascinating to see
the original woman who modeled for all of these stilly poses,
because she literally was like, my butts in the air
and I'm holding my skirt up because the breeze is
(04:11):
coming or whatever. But it literally illustrates how the artist
shrunk her waist, stretched her legs, boosted her bust, you know,
gave her where she might have just been making like
a surprise dase, gave her those duck lips. Yeah. I mean,
this was the proto photoshop going on right now, and
(04:32):
that whole oops, I dropped my panties. More prurient kind
of post, the thing that you would see more in
girly magazines than on say a USO poster. That was
something that an illustrator named art Fram came up with.
It was a very particular kind of gimmick that was
then reproduced. And there's something apparently very appealing about that
(04:54):
moment of oh no, where all the elastic go. Well
that happened, but she never looks too too concerned. She's like, well,
I guess I'll just step on out, throw them away
and go about my day. Breeze doesn't come. It's like
the art equivalent of like a naked dream, you know,
because in your dream, in your naked you're like, maybe
(05:15):
if I just stand behind this light pole, like no
one will notice that I'm not wearing clothes, it's not
as big a deal as if you suddenly were completely
stark naked in public. Yeah. I mean that is part
of though, the delight of the pin up, because very
little phases her. It seems like, yeah, she's very innocent.
She she doesn't have a thought in that pretty shiny,
(05:37):
pale head. Well, let's talk a little bit about how
pin ups were conceived, and this is coming from Mary
Lenna Buseck, who we're going to cite a lot, not
only in this podcast, but she also gets a nod
in our follow up podcast on Betty Page, and also
again from Diane Hansen, who wrote the copy for Tashan's
(05:58):
The Art of the pin Up and Music. Though, really
traces the pin up back to the fifteenth century because
that's when we get the printing press, and this allows
for artistic reproductions. That makes this kind of imagery obviously
not nineteen forties pin up imagery, but just imagery in
(06:18):
general more accessible to poorer classes. Yeah, so instead of
going to a museum or you know, wherever, you could
have works of art hanging on your walls at home.
And then as we move through the centuries, technological advancements
obviously make it easier, cheaper, faster to create artistic reproductions
(06:40):
and get those into people's homes or you know, as
the case, maybe into their garages or break rooms wherever
they're hiding from their wives. Yeah, and alongside that too,
the rise of the middle class also creates this consumer
base for it. And one thing that Beausic talks about
is that in the nineteenth century, in particular, she says,
quote the female body is the ultimate signifier of modernity,
(07:06):
and this too in the nineteenth century. In eighteen eighty
nine is when Thomas Murphy and Edmund Osborne print the
first calendar featuring ads beneath the images. Because the thing
to remember about pin ups is that it really started
as advertising imagery. Yeah, look at my ad. Here's a
pretty girl and he's a calendar. Well, the pretty girl
(07:27):
who was on this first calendar was actually George Washington.
He his beautiful cheap bones. Um canful that it breezes
and catch his bleaches, lit those wooden teeth, read out
of his mouth. Um, and not shockingly, it didn't sell well.
The calendar market so to speak, didn't really heat up
until about nineteen o three with the release of the
first girl calendar, titled Cassette. And it makes sense that
(07:52):
because that sold so well, because these kinds of calendars
were intended for workplaces, and at this time workplaces were
i mean except in very specific kinds of side industries
like habadashows where you might have lady hat makers. Um,
there are still more exclusively male spaces. So you see
(08:15):
pin ups mostly in those kinds of break rooms of
your in the twenties and thirties via these calendars. Yeah,
and stepping back though to we've talked about the Gibson
Girl on the podcast before. She's sort of like the
proto pin up. And while she's technically more of a
what's called glamour art, so more of something you might
(08:37):
see in a fashion magazine as instead of just one
of those hidden away calendars, she definitely was the first
centerfold and she ended up being reproduced on postcards, plates, calendars, again,
the same things that we eventually see pin ups being
put on well. And she also is really instrumental in
(08:57):
terms of establishing this beauty ideal from fiction, really from
Charles Dana Gibson's mind of well, this is what a
beautiful woman looks like, and it trickles down all the
way to, for instance, her slender ankles that we talked
about in our Cankles podcast about how well the Gibson
girl is putting her ankles on display. And this is
(09:20):
a very new thing for fashion, so all of a sudden,
well they're slender, Well you better have some slender ankles.
And the Gibson Girl was mimicked in Chandler Christie's The
Christie Girl for the Century magazine. There was also Harrison
Fisher's Fisher Girl, which was included in Puck magazine and
(09:41):
also Cosmopolitan from around nineteen twelve to nineteen thirty two,
and all of these women are similarly beautiful and aloof yeah,
it's it's interesting to watch the timeline of how advertising
and the days media watching it shape women's appearance and
(10:01):
how women were expected to look, because I mean, it's
not like the Christie Girl. I'm looking at a picture,
it's not like the Christie Girl. Was particularly scandalous, you know.
She It was like, oh, well, you just have your
hair up in a bun. Well, it seems like in
a way, these gibs and girls and the Christie girls
were more not necessarily targeted. I don't think that it
(10:21):
was that specific, but they were more influential on women.
They had a wider women's audience that this is what
you need to look like, whereas pin ups were more
man it's just look at his name was brought over here. Well,
so what's kind of evolving After we have the lovely
Fisher girl and the prim and proper Christie girl in
(10:42):
the background, we evolved into the twenties and thirties where
we get girly mags which feature full color pin up
girls on the cover, and then you even get pulp
magazines that illustrate adventure, crime, detective, sci fi stories, again
all with you know, titillating pin up images. Yeah, and
I'm sure it coincides too with the fact that women
(11:03):
just in their day to day fashion wise are showing
more skin than ever before. Yeah. Um, So when it
comes so to who really popularized the pin up as
we think of it today, a lot of it has
to do with Esquire magazine. Esquire was all about some
pin ups. It was launched in three as a magazine
(11:24):
for affluent men who liked stylish clothes and sexy women
and has anything really changed? Um, And it commissioned artists
like George Petty to paint these idealized images of super
hot babes ak a pin ups. Yeah, and you'll also
be familiar with magazines like this doing this even today,
because you've got Vanity Fair, which features not paintings but
(11:50):
super super obviously airbrushed images of young Starlett's dressed in
the whole pin up gear, posed in a very stereotypical
pin up fashion, just as part of a little Q
and a feature off to the side on one page.
But anyway, the popularity of these pin up girls in
Esquire ended up spawning art cards that men and boys
collected and traded like baseball cards. But as this popularity
(12:14):
and sort of the commodification of it increases by Esquire
tells Petty, like, dude, you are asking for way too
much money, and so they chuck him and hire Peruvian
born Alberto Vargas, who was already sort of a not
a household name, but he was a big deal in
terms of painting images of women, because he was the
one behind the zig Feld Follies posters. Yeah, he was
(12:37):
their official painter um. But if you have heard of
the Varga Girls, you'll notice that it's not the Vargas
Girls because Esquire made him drop the s in his
name because they thought it sounded too possessive, which was
an interesting fact. And the first Varga girl that Esquire
(12:58):
prince is a blod on and she's hanging out on
the phone talking in a short black nightgown like you do,
like you do. And these Varga girls became mainstream propaganda,
particularly during World War Two, decorating not only bunkers and barracks,
but also fighter planes and warships. And one statistic that
(13:18):
we found said that from two to Esquire delivered six
million copies of its magazine to U. S troops overseas
and three million to the domestic military. Yeah, my grandfather
during World War Two, his airplane did not have a
sexy lady on it, although many of his friends planes did.
(13:40):
He instead just had it painted with the name Saucy
sal which was my grandmother. So he still had a
cute little name on it, but but no sexy lady
s And so my my mother Sally is Sally Jr.
So was your grandmother saucy? She was? She was very
sweet lady, but maybe she was saucy with him, maybe
(14:01):
had a saucy side, could be saucy sou I mean, obviously,
you know, and everybody knew about the popularity of these
Esquire images. At one point, comedian Bob Hope said, our
troops are ready to fight at the drop of an
Esquire And can we describe sort of the style of
the Varga girl, because she's very distinct. I mean, she
(14:23):
kind of has like a very particular kind of thing
going on. Yeah, it's it's sort of she's both cartoony
and photo realistic all at the same time, because I mean,
she's obviously incredibly buxom. She's posed in a very kind
of unnatural way. She's super leggy, super busty, super blonde,
(14:43):
or if she's a little more dangerous, maybe she's super brunette. Yeah.
And it's interesting too to see how pin ups played
into the military imagery as well, because you have pin
ups in sexy pin up military uniforms. You even have
one she's topless, but you know, she's covering her side
(15:05):
boob you can and she can only see her bare
back and she is pulling out she's presumably putting on
the uniform of a Women's Auxiliary Core. So it's sort
of sly in the implication that, yeah, these male soldiers
are definitely into these pin ups and they find it
(15:27):
patriotic and they're kind of fighting for her, and also it,
you know, gives them a little titilation in the trenches.
But women were aware of them too, so it was
also a way of saying, well, ladies, if you want
to be sexy and desirable, well look at this. Look
at this blonde putting on her women's auxilary xillary Core uniform.
(15:50):
That could be you too. Why does she use shirt
when she has a whack hat? It's totally fine, true,
I mean. And also, by the way, listeners, the hat
box for this whack Cat Whack being the Women's Army
Auxiliary Corps, is also beautifully detailed. It's like in this
lovely striped hat box, which you know, that's fun. Who
(16:12):
didn't like a hat box? Caroline? And it was this
beautiful image of this beautiful woman who was used to
help sell war bonds, recruit women into the war effort,
and even motivate soldiers sort of remind them what they're
fighting for. They're fighting for this blonde, all American busty babes,
you know, come home, to come home safely. To Yeah,
(16:34):
there were these stories throughout the war of dead soldiers
being found with Varga Girl pin ups on their persons
or these calendars. One one soldier died in combat and uh,
they found his Varga Girl calendar that he had used
also as sort of a diary as well. So, I
(16:56):
mean they were very much intertwined with World War two, um,
but on the home front at Esquire Vargas, Vargas' relationship
with the magazine sours and leaves in ninety six. In
ninety five, after the war, little magazine called Playboy launches. Yeah,
(17:19):
and also just a year after that, Esquire finally gets
in on the game itself and launches its own girly calendars.
So even though they had sort of helped launch this
whole pin up thing, they had not had their own
calendars up to this point. So once it's been a
thing for several years, and once Playboys on the scene,
they're like, oh, well, we should probably start exploiting images
of naked women too. Yeah, get on the ball, Esquire.
(17:42):
Come on. I don't know what they were waiting for.
But you know, we mentioned technology earlier, and as photo
printing technology improves throughout this period, the painted hand airbrushed
pin up gets retired. And you also have to take
into account that what's going on culturally in the context
of the time, and the fact that as more women
(18:02):
post war into the fifties, sixties, and seventies are entering
the workforce and starting to join up with second wave feminism,
pin ups are no longer an acceptable thing to have
in the workplace. You can't just be hanging up your
naked lady calendar where other ladies can see that. Yeah,
that was one thing. A pin up collector commented, saying,
(18:24):
before the seventies and those feminists, no one thought there
was anything wrong with these beautiful gals, the good old
days of sexual harassment, before there was even a term
for sexual harassment, Carolina Um. But when it comes to
the heyday of pin ups, before we leave them behind.
While Vargas does get a lot of the glory, there
(18:44):
were some notable female pin up artists at work that
we want to spotlight as well, who arguably created more
physically precise pin ups. And we're going to talk about
those ladies when we come right back from a quick break.
(19:07):
So Kristen mentioned the lady pin up painters who were
in the game and whether they were more precise with
their art, whether they were more precise in depicting a
woman's body, because you know, we already talked about how
the male artists would link in the legs, boost the bust,
all of that stuff, and so were these women doing
the same thing. While they certainly were presenting uh, sort
(19:32):
of an idealized version of a woman's body through their art,
they were creating sort of more anatomically correct figures. Yeah,
and they usually weren't as overtly sexy. They were very
beautiful and they were still sexy, but not as Vava
Ba Boom, perhaps as say of Varga girl. And this
(19:53):
is coming from a fantastic article by sociologist Lisa Wade,
and we saw it all the time on the podcast.
She wrote this over at Collectors Weekly, and she really
highlights three really successful Golden Age pin up painters. Pearl Fresh, Joyce,
Balanine and Zoe Mozart. And Zoe was probably the most
(20:16):
publicly visible of the three, both in terms of publicity
and also pin up art itself. And she was a character.
Well yeah, and the reason she was so visible is
because she herself was a pin up model, whether for
other artists or for her own art. And I think
that's so fascinating. She was teeny tiny, she was like
what four eleven. She was described as like an eight
(20:39):
five pound spitfire at one point. Um. But yeah, she
was incredibly interested in the female form, sometimes to the
point of body snarking. For instance, she ranked women movie
stars of the time. Her favorites included Ida Lopino, Gene Crane,
and Mary Anderson, but she was not as approving of
(21:00):
Veronica leg Yeah. No, she had like very specific criteria
for what she considered the perfect female body. And she
started out painting cosmetic ads and funny side note, used
her brother Bruce and her sister Marcia to model as couples,
and Bruce was her favorite lip model, so it all
(21:21):
these cosmetic ads started to women. If you know you
had like the disembodied lips, those were Bruce's lips. Getting
all glammed up. Yeah, there was an ad. It's it's
basically just the head. It's the painting of just a
woman's face and her hair, and she's got her head
tilted back to fully illustrate her full shiny lips. And yeah,
those full shiny lips belong to her. But I wonder
(21:43):
if she made him wear the lipstick. Do you think
he had to wear lipstick or do you think she
just kind of, Oh, she was good. I bet she um.
I bet he didn't have to wear the lipstick. But
maybe maybe he wanted to. He might have wanted to.
You know, we don't know that much about Bruce Mosert,
but we do know that Zoe blew up painting advertisements
(22:04):
and magazine covers. She quickly made a name for herself,
but when it came to Esquire, they passed her over
because at one point she thought that she was going
to be tapped to replace Vargas, but Escar was like, thanks,
but no thanks. But she did find steady work with
Brown and Bigelow, which was the nation's biggest calendar company.
Because remember these advertising calendars that usually were decorated with
(22:29):
pin ups were still very big business at the time,
and Not only did she create images for the calendars,
but she also created pin up mutoscope cards for World
War two troops. And I had to look up what
a mudscope was, and it's basically just imagine, like, you know,
how we had those little viewfinder clicky clickie viewfinders in
the eighties whatever they're called. They were red and they
(22:50):
had a little thing and you clicked them and it
went to the Yeah, exactly, Um, but yeah, mutoscope was
like a giant version of that. So instead of looking
moving images on a screen, you would have an individual experience.
So it was like a like an old school Google glass,
but just the only thing you could see was babes, right, okay,
(23:11):
Google babes, Google babes. Um well, Mozart After making lots
of Google babes moved to Hollywood and Paramount Pictures shot
a short film which I note that is a tongue twister.
Listeners A shot a short film with her for its
Unusual Occupation series, and this is when it talked about
(23:32):
how she not only with a zilli mos pin up
otics but also a model du Yeah. They had her
post in one of the images wearing the same little
costume that the woman in her painting was was wearing
and and she told somebody later like, well, I mean
that's great now, but I would never be able to
paint a painting in the way they posed me. That's
(23:53):
just ridiculous. And there's also a photograph of her painting
the image for the Jane russ A movie Outlaw, where
Jane Russell's reclined and she's got her like little like
western get up and she's holding a gun. Um. So
that's a pretty famous image, which you should also that's
another Google babe. Yeah, that's that's an yeah, actual Google
image babe. Right. Um, but yeah, Zoe was quoted as saying,
(24:17):
my whole life centered around men and art. Men were
easy to come by, and my paintings were my children.
So she was. She was because she was married what
four times? She was pretty dedicated to her art. So yeah.
And funnily enough, she also wished that mail pin ups
were a thing. She once said, it's a shame nobody
wanted to hang up pictures of beautiful men in their garages,
(24:40):
but business was business, and one had to meet the demand. Yeah.
I mean, if the ancient Greeks could sculpt a beautiful
athletic male nude. Why can't we have male pin up calendars? Well,
there were beefcake photos, but you know, moms of the
day weren't allowed to hang those up in the kitchen
(25:02):
in their in their inclusive space and their sphere. Um. Well,
moving to Pearl Fresh, she's kind of more of a
mysterious character when compared to Zoe, mostly because her paintings
didn't really hold up, not in terms of style but
just literally. Uh, she was creating these watercolors that was
that were difficult to reproduce on a large scale. Yeah,
(25:25):
and she was super technically skilled with her photo realism
and she was best known for that calendar art in
the nineteen fifties. And what's really notable about Pearl Fresh
is not only how beautiful these women are that she paints,
but also how athletic they are as well. Um, they're swimming,
(25:45):
their canoeing, they're playing tennis. As she had this one
particular aquatic series that did really well, and I thought
it was it's just interesting to see how she loved
to see her beautiful women in action. But yeah, that
a bottic series actually broke records for the publisher and
so people it's not like she was just painting it
for her own enjoyment. People really clamored to get these
(26:07):
athletic beauties. And then we have Joyce Valentine, who is
actually you've probably seen this. She's best known for the
Copper Tone Girl ad, for which her daughter modeled. Yeah,
and even though you know, everybody knows her as you know,
the copper Tone artist, and it helped put her on
the map. Ultimately later in life, it bummed her out
(26:32):
that that was her signature work because she said, quote
and it's just another baby ad kind of boring. Yeah, well,
not to mention people. For decades now, I've been banging
down her daughter's door to interview about having her butt show,
I know, being the copper Tone baby. Um. And Joyce also, though,
experienced career sexism early on, so she was very talented
(26:54):
from a young age. And at one point she enters
this art contest and wins, and the prize is a
scholar our ship to the Disney School for Animation. But
when the Disney rep gets a little Joyce on the
phone to say, hey, congratulations, let's plan your trip out here,
she's turned away once the representative realizes that she is
(27:16):
a she because Disney was like, oh wait, yeah, no,
we don't really allow girls to come out here and
do this. And if you want to learn more about that,
we have done a great podcast on the women behind Disney.
But yeah, she's basically told no, women have babies. You don't.
You're you're a poor investment. Um. But despite that, she
(27:40):
was well respected among other top named pin up artists,
particularly during her stint at Steven's Gross studio, where she
was part of what was called the sun Blow Circle,
named for Coca Santa creator hadn't sun Blow. She was
also super close pals with Gil Evgren, who's a fellow
pin up artist, and she and Elgrant even posed for
(28:02):
each other because Balentine was also big on Payton dudes. Yeah,
Zoe wasn't the only person who liked to paint dudes.
Well you know, I mean, I would imagine that, if
only for Variety's sake, you might want to paint a
fella every now and then. Um. But Ed Franklin, a
friend of hers, said she was an icon for a
(28:22):
woman in a man's world, and she kind of got
what was considered pigeonholed into advertising art because this was
the I mean earliest of the Mad Been Season's days
where everything was being done by hand. You don't have
photo technology to the point that you're having these, you know,
glossy images being reproduced. It's people like Joyce and Pearl
(28:46):
and Zoe who are painting the actual ad campaigns. And
so her work was featured in all sorts of advertisements
for big name companies including Coke Yeah, and her take,
Joyce's take in particular on the pin up was that
she said, the trick is to make a pin up flirtatious.
She said she always made sure, even for her stuff
(29:07):
that was featured in Esquire and Penthouse, she always made
sure to have clothes or at least a towel covering
up some of the lady bits because she says that
she wasn't into the whole quote unquote dirty thing that
Penthouse and Playboy we're doing at the time. Well, and
that kind of segues us into the next thing we
want to talk about, which is what do these incredibly
(29:31):
popular then and now images of these idealized women really
say about the time and also about us today in
female sexuality. Because pin Up Dealer, Marry and Old Phillips
on those three female pin up artists said, I think
they would consider themselves feminists and the thing is feminism,
(29:56):
as we mentioned earlier, was partly blamed for the demise
is of pin ups in the nineteen seventies, although more
in reality it probably had a lot more to do
with Playboy, more explicit pornography and photo reproductive technology. Um.
But there are arguments that pin up imagery both then
and today, in this kind of pin up nostalgia, like
(30:17):
what you're talking about earlier with the Vanity Fair photo spreads,
does have tinges of feminism embedded in it. Yeah. Um.
Maria Elena Buzak, who we mentioned earlier, does argue that
we culturally have a lot to learn from pin ups,
as pin up interpretation is one of the myriad ways,
(30:39):
she says, in which women have defined, politicized, and represented
their own sexuality in the public eye, and similarly, how
feminism has shaped women's sexuality. Yeah. And she wrote an
entire book about this called pin Up Girls. That's Girl
as in The Riot Girl, Girl with No Eye, feminism, sexuality,
and pop culture, and she argues that pin ups embrace
(31:03):
both the normative because these are ladies going about their
typical feminine business and the transgressive because it also shows
women being sexual, so it presents this taboo for mass
pop cultural consumption and views. That goes on to talk
about how the pin up girl occupies this sort of
(31:25):
gray area between portraiture, which is respectable and pornography, which
is obviously not respectable to most people. But she says
it's too pryan to ever be considered fine art, even
though the quality of the photo realistic portraiture people like
Pearl Fresh and her athletes were technically impeccable. Yeah, And
(31:47):
that's one thing that we haven't even touched on at all,
is how it's starting. I think it was in the
late eighties or early nineties when these pin up collectors
start coming out of the woodwork, and this question arises
of well is this art? Because it had never really
been considered art worthy of any kind of critique because
(32:08):
it was commercial and it was sexy. Right. Yeah, So
even when whether it was a woman like Zoe Mozart
or somebody like Vargas, even when they created a beautiful
image that was an oil painting, like a big scale painting,
that stuff was just thrown out with the garbage. On
a lot of cases because it was like, oh well, okay, great,
this is your rough draft. We've printed copies of it.
It made it into the calendar this year. We don't
(32:30):
need it anymore. And now though, because there is a
market for those originals, I mean, if you can get
your hands on a Vargas, then you're gonna you could
make a lot of money at an art auction. But
being of Vargas, so when we consider the pin ups
in World War Two and how they were used to
(32:51):
sell and propel the war effort. Speaking to The New
York Times, use that calls pin ups modern war goddesses. So,
I mean, that's a that's a pretty powerful kind of
statement to make. And in her book pin Up Girls
Music talks about how quote the Varga Girl presented the
American public with a hutu for unheard of combination of
(33:13):
conventional beauty, blatant sexuality, professional independence, and wholesome patriotism that
resembled a similar contradictory cocktail of attributes cultivated by young
women of the period. Yeah, so she was a bundle
of contradictions. She was wholesome, but having her dress lifted up,
you know, she was innocent and sort of vacant but
(33:36):
sexy and beautiful. Um, she could be used to advertise Schlitz,
or she could be used to inspire people to go
to war. Yeah, and there was in that New York
Times article. You know, they're talking to Beau Steck, who's
very raw rob about these pin ups, calling the modern
war goddesses. But then there was an older woman they
(33:57):
were talking to. Um, I forget if it was an
art creck or art historian, and she was saying, you know,
because she lived during this time when these pin ups
were everywhere. She was saying, I mean, but at the
same time, those were our idealized women. Those were the
the types of women that we strived to look like.
That was our standard. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know,
(34:19):
put yourself in the in the shoes of someone who's
living fifties sixty seventy years from now looking back at
like our Gucci ads and calling them, you know, revolutionary
and feminist and sexy, and it's like, well, it's it's
more complicated than that. It's not just feminist or not feminist,
sexy or not sexy, exploitive or not exploitative. Um, there's
(34:41):
there's a lot of gray area when it comes to
the philosophy behind what we ourselves are projecting onto these
pin up girls. Well, and there's definitely been in more
recent years this attempt at reclamation because there are a
number of women who are notly just drawn to the
pin up aesthetic um, but also find it very empowering.
(35:06):
And it's worth noting too that Lisa Wade in that
Collector's Weekly article reported that there are more female pin
up collectors than male. But they're even beyond just collecting images.
There are these now specialized pin up photography studios. There's
one here in Atlanta, um that are set up for
(35:28):
women to come and get dressed up and have these
super sexy vintagy photos taken of them. Yeah. Um. Sophie Spinnell,
who's the founder of San Francisco Shameless Photography, told the
Huffington Post that they're trying to create sexy, feminist, body
positive images, and she says the most important audience for
(35:48):
the Shameless pin up series is the models themselves. I
hope that when they look at these images they can
see how truly powerful, inspiring and sold deep beautiful they
really are. And it's it's sort of reclaiming a different
kind of femininity what the New York Times Style section
calls a hip femininity of not following along with the
(36:09):
cape mosses or the gazelles or whoever, like the tall,
skinny figure that is unattainable for so many people, especially
if you're just short. You're never gonna be nine ft tall.
But if that's what the image you grew up looking at,
it's almost like looking at the image of a pin
up model who already does have hips and a butt
and boobs. It's like, well, I have those things. We
(36:31):
can work with this. Yeah. I think that that's really
what resonates is that this modern day pin up revival,
even stretching into rockabilly culture and style, is very more
body friendly for a lot of women. Those styles are
incredibly flattering on more curvaceous frames. Yeah, And so I
(36:53):
mean I would argue that, I mean, there's a lot
of argument on the internet under this Huffington Post article
and for picular about whether pin up imagery is feminist
or not. And I think that if something empowers you,
it's none of my business whether it empowers you or not.
Good for you, good for you, not for me. That
whole quote that We've saided before on the podcast. Um,
(37:15):
but there is something nice about people being able to,
through whatever means, take pride in their own figures and
feel comfortable in their own skin. Yeah. And then New
York Time style piece also suggests that there is a
comfort too in the visual familiarity of those kinds of styles.
(37:37):
And it's understated sexuality. It's hyper feminine, but at the
same time it's not like extremely explicit you know you
have You're still you're still covered, but it's accenting your
feminine curves and not just displaying your skin. Well, it
seems to also it's it's coinciding with the Zoey Deschanel's
of the world, who are saying I can wear a
(37:58):
Peter Pan collar and still be a feminist. You know.
It's the it's the whole attitude of the Third Waivers
who are saying, no, I'm not rejecting femininity, I'm embracing
who I am and what I look like. And this
pin up culture just seems to be sort of parallel
to all that. But meanwhile, Andrea Dorkin not surprisingly is
(38:20):
having none of this pin up appreciation. So a little
bit of background the Spencer Art Museum at the University
of Kansas was gifted the massive esquire Um photo collection
containing so many of vargas Is pieces. And so they
(38:44):
you know, they get all this work, and they're all
these essays commissioned by the museum to analyze and critique
this pin up imagery and particularly these Varga girls and
kind of place them in art history. And dork In
is just so enraged by the entire thing. And and
(39:08):
she actually, I mean she's the one also who was
specifically commissioned to write a piece about this. This is
not her, just like off on the side saying no, no, no,
shaking her finger. So at one point, she writes, Vargas
is subject or object, to be more precise, is some lazy,
fetishistic view of white women, pale women, usually blonde. The
drawing itself delineates the boundaries of a non existence, a
(39:31):
white female nonentity. Yeah, basically saying that this is just
an empty vessel for us to pour all of our
masturbatory fantasies into. She goes on to say that this
is a sambo like representation of white women, and noting
the predominance of blonde hair. She does go so far
as to mention that Americans weren't the only ones during
(39:55):
World War Two to have these images that Germans had
their own equivalent to, and she goes so far as
to say that Germans and Americans are fighting for the
same arean image. Oh goodness, yeah. And so she concludes,
I don't know why Argus did these drawings except for
the money and hatred of women, including women of color.
So she sees no value in it whatsoever, to the
(40:18):
point of saying in the essay University of Kansas, you
didn't even have to accept these this donation, this gift,
but you took it anyway, and so you're playing into
the whole system um Andrew had worken though, for those
of you who aren't familiar with her, is has been
staunchly anti pornography for years, so this is very much
(40:38):
in line with, you know, the rest of her body,
her broader body of work. But she does make a
really good point, particularly in terms of that idealization of
that usually blonde, white woman. I mean that that's the
thing that jumped out to me too while researching this
(40:59):
and thinking about all of those pin ups that were
on my wall. It was just it's all white women,
all of them. But it's it's not it's the furthest
thing from the truth to say that black pin ups
and black sexuality did not exist in media. Um, we
were looking at Sydney f Lewis, writing over at baby
(41:21):
center dot Com had a fascinating column about black pin
ups because she she starts off by talking about how
you know, she was just looking into it. You know,
we're there black pin ups. Maybe there was too much
uh exclusion from the industry based on race, So maybe
they weren't even permitted to to model or to you know,
(41:42):
be performers in burlesque shows like white women were. But
as she's doing her research and she comes across old
issues of Jet magazine in the fifties, she's like, oh, wait, no,
there's a bajillion of these beautiful, sexy women of color
doing the same time of modeling that white women were doing.
It's just that white people weren't consuming it, so it
(42:04):
didn't become part of a larger mainstream. Yeah. I mean
there was even the Jet Calendar, which had the very
saucy tagline score with a Jet mate every month. But
and again, very similar kinds of pin up posing. Um
in nineteen four, black photographer Howard Moorehead made an entire
photo essay called Gentlemen Prefer Bronze, celebrating the black pin up,
(42:29):
and Jim Lindeman, also writing about this over at Collector's Weekly,
talks about how, yes, these images existed, particularly in African
American publications like Jet Magazine, but they were more broadly
considered to be pornographic. They were more specialty because of
(42:51):
you know, all of all the things we've talked about
before on the podcast in terms of the hyper sexualization
of women of color for time immemorial, and that is
still a live and well during the mid century when
this is happening. So Lindaman writes, the nineteen sixty six
Pussycat calendar of black pinups is just like the white
pinup calendars found in gas stations, but this was produced
(43:14):
by pornographer Ruben Sturman rather than for example, your favorite
brand of gasoline additive. Because it's almost like the way
that black pin ups and uh, these images were treated.
It's almost like, oh, well, no, the blonde, white woman
who is essentially naked, if not you know, totally naked. Um.
(43:34):
Now that's that's a pure form of sexuality that's been
that's been used to inspire people to do great things,
whereas apparently, according to the way that these things are produced,
like well know, the black sexuality scary though, and that's
that's not for for consumption, for white consumption, right Like,
So so it's fine, and it's not going to be
behind a brown cover if it's in a jet magazine
(43:55):
because those are black people looking at that. So that's okay.
But if you're a white guy and you have uh,
you know, a black pinup calendar hanging up in your garage,
then whoa dude, you're incredibly deviant. What are you into? Oh?
Just beauty? Okay. So as vacant as that old school
(44:16):
pin up imagery might seem to be, I think we
can conclude Caroline that there are definitely layers to her.
There layers to that duck face. Yeah, what would you
tell your your college decorating self. Now, if you were
to walk into younger Christian's apartment and see those pin
ups on the wall. I mean I don't think I'd
freak out. I would just be like, oh man, you've
(44:38):
got to get out of this apartment. This department is
so sad. It was really like just the saddest apartment.
It had like one small window and just stained carpet.
It was the last college apartment that I lived in.
Um so we Honestly, the pin ups were the last
of my words at the time. Yeah, but I don't. Yeah,
(44:59):
I mean I can't. As we're going to talk about
in our next episode on Betty Page, I get to
align with trying to, you know, indow too much meaning
into these images too. Yeah, I mean they were made,
they were made to sell things, yeah, and they did.
(45:19):
But I do think it's really fascinating and want to
hear from listeners about, you know how this nostalgia for
pin ups that is very much alive and well today
and if there there is any kind of if there
are any kinds of conflicted feelings about that, or if
you love pin ups, let us know. Mom Stuff at
(45:40):
how stuff Works dot Com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast hashtag pinups week,
or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
messages to share with you when we come right back
from a quick break. Well, I have a letter here
from Jasmine about our Trophy Wives episode. She says when
(46:03):
I first read the title, I had an image in
my head that was completely different than the one you described.
I thought of my experience in college where both men
and women were looking for their picture perfect match. Where
the future lawyer meets the other future lawyer and they
get engaged days before graduation. She in turn becomes the
trophy wife, and that she no longer focuses on becoming
(46:24):
a lawyer, but instead the perfect housewife. She'll host all
the dinner parties and is a symbol that he has
it all, the perfect job and life at home. I
remember hearing women claim that they only came to college
to find a husband. Jasmine, I remember hearing that too.
She goes on to say, I was pleasantly surprised that
your episode touched on everything, but my original thought, it's
(46:47):
a really good example of how the trophy wife is
a stereotype we choose to see, but isn't really there.
Maybe people just marry the person they're compatible with and
we just have to put them into a category and
label them. Thanks for taking the time to go more
in depth on the topic. I really enjoy listening to
your podcast. Thanks, Jasmine. Well, I've got a letter here
from Julia about our Divorced Women podcast and her letters
(47:10):
a little bit long, but I want to read the
whole thing because she has some really important stuff to say,
so she writes, I love the podcast. I found the
Divorced Women episode very interesting, but I was disappointed that
you didn't really address the young divorce day. I was
in my late twenties when I got divorced in two
thousand and eight, after only three years of marriage. I
looked for resources to help me with what I found
(47:33):
to be a truly devastating event. But everything I found, books,
support groups, divorce care websites were geared towards separated and
divorced women and men with children, complicated legal and or
custody situations, and lots of assets they had to split.
I understand why this is, but it would have been
nice to not feel like a childless, divorced loser who
(47:54):
was totally alone. More disheartening, however, was that so many
people I knew didn't seem to take my divorce very seriously.
I was in a lot of pain, and some people
treated my marriage as a quote starter marriage. The reactions
seemed to be that I should have been able to
just brush myself off and start dating again, and because
I was young, it wasn't that big of a deal
to have my whole world turned upside down. The advice
(48:17):
I found online and in books mirrored what I was
hearing from friends and acquaintances. I had never heard of
starter marriages before, and I found some media resources that
suggested this was a new trend at the time. Young
people get married, tried out for a few years to
practice their relationship skills, then get divorced on a whim,
and later pursue a marriage that they intend to take seriously.
I would like to know where this idea came from.
(48:39):
Although I was the first person I knew to get
divorced in my twenties, as the years have passed, I've
witnessed more and more of my relatively young friends getting divorced,
and I can say for sure that none of them
did it on a whim. It's a painful, life altering process,
and I can't imagine that any of my friends would
have ever described their failed marriages as starter marriages. I
also want to share a theory of out why women
(49:00):
in heterosexual marriages file for divorce more often. Again, this
may apply largely to the younger crowd. But in my
case and in the cases of my divorced friends, the
wife always filed because the husband simply wouldn't do it.
Even when the husband was the one who wanted the
separation and wouldn't agree to work on the relationship, even
when he moved out, cut marital ties, was living with
another woman, etcetera, he would not file for divorce. These
(49:24):
men didn't want to be married, but they didn't seem
to want to be divorced either. The wife always had
to actually file the paperwork after waiting months for the
husband to do it. My theory is that men of
the younger generation are accustomed to women taking the initiative
in almost every aspect of the romantic and domestic relationships,
and they're willing to wait it out to avoid doing
the work. I guess that's a nice way of saying
(49:45):
that men are lazy. In my case, I believe it
was also because my ex husband wanted to be able
to tell people that I was the one who filed
in order to paint himself in a better light. Anyway,
keep up the good work, I'll keep listening. So while
I'm not going to endorse broadbrush stereotype that men are
lazy Julia, everything else I think is really important. We
(50:08):
didn't talk about the young divorces, and that's something that
I've observed as well among my friend circle of knowing
you know, seeing going to you know friends weddings, and
now knowing them uh in their new post divorce um
status is so more resources, it sounds like, are definitely needed,
(50:29):
and we also need to kill the myth of the
starter marriage. So curious to here from other folks who
might have experienced similar things to moms. Stuff at how
stuff works dot com is our email address, and again
for links to all of our social media as well
as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this
one with all of our links. If you want to
see more pics of those of our GA girls, head
(50:51):
on over to stuff mom Never Told You dot com
for more on this and that's of other topics. Is
it how staff works dot com
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