A pinup can represent whatever we love, want to love, or want to have. Any printed image that can be hung on a wall could conceivably be regarded as a pinup, and in common usage the term extends even further — to pinup images, for example, on playing cards, key chains, drinking glasses, cigarette lighters, and other objects that never reach the wall. (In World War II, pinups frequently adorned the sides of tanks and aircraft as mascots or good-luck talismans.) Thus, despite the literal meaning of the term, it is clear that the essence of a pinup is not so much its physical form as its quality of image, the image most commonly being that of a person — particularly a sexually alluring woman.

   The classic pinup genre — cheesecake — fulfills our definition perfectly. Cheesecake (which Webster defines as "photography displaying especially female comeliness and shapeliness") is said to have gotten its name when, in September 1915, a newspaper photographer, George Miller, noticed a visiting Russian diva, Elvira Amaazar, just as she was debarking from her ship in New York. Miller asked the opera signer to hike up her skirt a little for the sake of his picture. Later, the photographer's editor, something of a gourmet, is supposed to have exclaimed, "Why, this is better than cheesecake!" The story, apocryphal or not, dates from an era that saw the birth of an international mode in illustration that still teases the eye, the libido, and the wallet of most men. It continues to thrive in the worlds of entertainment, publishing, and advertising and is used to sell almost everything, from ball bearings to ideas.

   The cheesecake image is based on notions of teasing and allure — and frequently humor as well. But other styles of pinups have been used in association with a vast array of emotions, attitudes, pursuits, subjects, mediums: violence, satire, romance, eroticism, purity, fetishism, dance, drama, burlesque, aspiring stardom, sports, cartoons, comic strips, advertisements, domesticity, nature, nationalism, pacifism. Yet overall, erotic fantasy is the key to understanding all styles of the pinup. Although the pinup depends for its success on a sexually evocative image, it should not be confused, for instance, with original nude or erotic art. The pinup is a printed form, intended for general distribution to a large audience. An erotic painting or drawing may be, and often is, reproduced. Many pinups do originate as drawings or paintings — for example, the Gibson, Petty, and Varga girls and innumerable calendar subjects. These images are pinups simply because they are intended to be pinups — to be mass produced for the purpose of arousing sexual fantasy. (In the photo above, taken aboard the WW II submarine USS Cod, two "Varga girls" decorate the ballast control panel.)

   The classic cheesecake pinup shows a curvy woman, sumptuous breasts exposed (or nearly exposed), posing coquettishly in a predictable, stylized setting — a bedroom, perhaps, or a studio, beach, or theatrical environment. There are in cheesecake endless variations of setting, pose, and anatomical emphasis. Cheesecake is the type of pinup found most frequently in girlie magazines.

    It is well recognized that everyone has, and must deal with, erotic fantasies. Although most of these drive from social experiences, especially in childhood, many other stimuli condition our thoughts and feelings. Without question, pinup images are a strong source of erotic fantasy. The basic one is that of direct sexual liaison with the pinup subject. The subtlest shifts in the model's pose or attitude can suggest many varied erotic possibilities, ranging from the most refined seduction to the crudest fetishism. In erotic fantasy we see two general directions: idealization, by which a man seeks to associate with the "beautiful people" and vulgarization, by which he safely indulges in "lower-class" sex objects. These kinds of erotic fantasy do not necessarily reflect abnormal tastes; nor can we say that it is more "normal" to idealize than to vulgarize.

The submissive poses of George Hurrell's Esquire pinups were
tailor-made for bunkside, barracks walls all over the world.

   The pinup for its own sake did not begin to emerge until the latter part of the 19th Century. It took two major forms: magazine photographs of renowned, even notorious actresses and dancing girls; and the Gibson Girl, who represented the first conscious effort to create a popular ideal of femininity. Thus, even in the early period, one discerns different social levels of pinups. The Gibson Girl at the turn of the century was the world's image of the American beauty. Although she had universal appeal, she was distinctly "high class". She was a status symbol for the masses. The other general class of pinups has presented women exclusively as sex objects through girlie magazines, movie fan magazines, calendars, posters, and other vehicles.

   Over the years as we have seen, girlie magazines took on various guises — "studio" photography, burlesque, theater — in order to present pinups. Only by exception in the first thirty years of the 20th Century, were any of these magazines not aimed at a mass audience on the lowest socio-economic levels. Not until Esquire began (1933) was the pinup aimed exclusively at readers of a higher social status. Esquire featured, from the start, articles and pictorials in the finest tradition of literary and esthetic magazines. Its pinups by Petty, Vargas, and other artists maintained the aura of "good taste." The pinups, many of which were two- and three-page foldouts, showed comic, sex-oriented situations reflecting the sophistication of the urban upper classes. Photographer George Hurrell also contributed heavily to the WW II pinup mill that Esquire was the foundation of, with color portraits of Hollywood starlets, many in "ready-to-ravish" poses (a la a young Judy Garland, above).

It's mid-1943 in the Aleutian Islands
and these GIs know how to heat a barracks!