You can pin them up anytime you want.
Take a break from endless free porn and every variation of naked girly girls and rediscover the incredible allure of not seeing everything with 1000 Pin-up Girls by Taschen.
Collecting together luscious illustrated front covers and ludicrous black and white photoshoots (uber-babe Betty Page in her underwear taking a dog for a walk down the street) from Beauty Parade, Eyeful, Titter, Wink, Whisper and Flirt, 1000 Pin-up Girls shows us that … guys don’t change.
These girly magazines were printed through the 1940s and 1950s and on every few pages you can see things you wouldn’t have thought were around back then. Hmm … incredibly hot blonde girl (Bound Beauty) photographed with wrists chained. Hmm … girl on girl wrestling. Hmm … girl with whip. Is it just me or do most people think the 40s and 50s were much more puritan than they obviously were?
Going Everywhere and Doing Everything in Underwear
The black and white photographs (known as photo-plays) tell ridiculous stories where girls in underwear get into all kinds of absurd almost silent-movie catastrophes. Trapped in a travelling chest – of course! Going to the dentist in your underwear and it just so happens the dentist is another hot girl in her underwear as well? Yes certainly!
Publisher Robert Harrison (who was involved in many a scandal back in the day) knew that men don’t read and don’t care what the story is so long as there is a girl in underwear involved. He was right then and he is right now. I’ve owned 1000 Pin-up Girls for a few years and looked at every picture but hardly read any of the accompanying text. What do I care why that girl is dressed as a sexy cop? She’s a sexy cop in underwear!
Before I talk about the brilliant illustrations I’ve got to mention the odd feeling I get whilst reading this book. No … it’s not that odd feeling in the pants. It’s the some-of-these-hot-girls-are-dead-and-gone feeling. These pictures are from say 1950 and the girls were about 25ish or so. So they’d be about 75 – 83 right now. Which means … they’re either dead and you’re getting hot over them or they’re 80 years old and you’re getting hot …
In the photos they’re so young and beautiful – perfect miracles of physical beauty and health and they’re all real girls. These are the days before Photoshop, breast implants and other tricks of beauty.
Enough sidenoting.
Sexy Illustrations
Those with a passing interest in “cheesecake illustration” or pinups have probably heard of Peter Driben, Earl Moran and Billy Devorss. Harrison hired them to illustrate the front covers of his many magazines and in our time we now call what they did “art” whereas at the time it was probably called smut or some other 1950s word like … saucy.
The illustrated pinup girls are simply extraordinary works. Sexy girls with long legs and wide real-girl hips are painted in amazing detail. As you flick through the book it’s easy to find an illustration far sexier than a real-life girl massaging another real-life girl (of course the masseuse would be in her underwear as well!). There is a lot of winking and expressions that are far hotter than the vacuous wide-open mouth expectant stare of a modern porn star.
It’s the anticipation you see. Illustrated girls waiting on beds, tying up bathing suits, stretching out their long legs and winking at you in their oh-so-seductive way. You feel as though they are in front of you, allowing you to watch … a mere moment away from you carrying them kicking and screaming over your shoulder to your bedroom.
I think the smiles really do it in making these illustrations so alluring. When did you last see a porn star smiling?
1000 Pin-up Girls is another one of those must-pick-it-up books for your bookshelf which may lead to your date jumping you. It gets people hot without anyone calling it x-rated.
Love that top
Spread throughout the book are some of the original advertising pages from the magazines and they are hilarity compressed into tiny squares. 100 feet of film of Betty Page dancing sent to you in brown-paper package. 1000 photographs of female beauty around the world in five picture-packed volumes (only $1.98 for the complete set and you’ll see Oriental modes of marriage and female slavery in China, Japan, India etc). Perhaps you’d like 16 glossy photographs of Gorgeous Grapplers showing lovely young blondes and brunettes testing their strength on the wrestling mat? Only $1.00 and will be sent in plain wrapper.
How I got 1000 Pin-up Girls: I’m going to have to go with the ever-amazing Polyester Bookshop in Brunswick Street. You can find it in mainstream bookshops though (at least those big enough to have some of the nicer art-type books from Taschen).
You can buy it from Amazon but check out the shipping first – it’s a bit of a chunky book in hardcover. You can also find a lot of illustrations around on the unite-o-wires if you do a bit of google-diving.
Oh yeah, there is a whole introduction to the various magazines and a bit of history on the publisher but no one will read it. Not when there is a girl lion-taming in her underwear to check out.
Happy reading,
Mat
–
i swear i didn’t sleep with your girlfriend
Follow me:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/mathewferguson
