Pin-up grrrls : feminism, sexuality, popular culture / Maria Elena Buszek.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Buszek, Maria Elena, 1971-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pinup art.

Women in art.

Feminism in art.

Feminism and art.

Physical Description:

xii, 444 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Pin-up girls

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2006.

Summary:

Subverting stereotypical images of women, a new generation of feminist artists is remaking the pin-up, much as Annie Sprinkle, Cindy Sherman, and others did in the 1970s and 1980s. As shocking as contemporary feminist pin-ups are intended to be, perhaps more surprising is that the pin-up has been appropriated by women for their own empowerment since its inception more than a century ago. Pin-Up Grrrls tells the history of the pin-up from its birth, revealing how its development is intimately connected to the history of feminism. Maria Elena Buszek documents the genre's 150-year history with more than 100 illustrations, many never before published.

Beginning with the pin-up's origins in mid-nineteenth-century carte-de-visite photographs of burlesque performers, Buszek explores how female sex symbols, including Adah Isaacs Menken and Lydia Thompson, fought to exert control over their own images. Buszek analyzes the evolution of the pin-up through the advent of the New Woman, the suffrage movement, fanzine photographs of early film stars, the Varga Girl illustrations that appeared in Esquire during World War II, the early years of Playboy magazine, and the recent revival of the genre in appropriations by third-wave feminist artists. A fascinating combination of art history and cultural history, Pin-Up Grrrls is the story of how women have publicly defined and represented their sexuality since the 1860s.

Contents:

Introduction: Defining/Defending the "Feminist Pin-Up" 1

1 Representing "Awarishness": The Theatrical Origins of the Feminist Pin-Up Girl 27

2 New Women for the New Century: Feminism and the Pin-Up at the Fin de Siecle 69

3 The Return of Theatrical Feminism: Early-Twentieth-Century Pin-Ups on the Stage, Street, and Screen 115

4 Celebrating the "Kind of Girl Who Dominates": Film Fanzines and the Feminist Pin-Up 142

5 New Frontiers: Sex, Women, and World War II 185

6 Pop Goes the Pin-Up: New Roles and Readings in the Postwar Era 232

7 Our Bodies/Ourselves: Pin-Ups in the Wake of Women's Liberation 268

8 From Womyn to Grrrls: The Postmodern Feminist Pin-Up 311.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [403]-435) and index.

ISBN:

0822337347

0822337460

OCLC:

62281839

Publisher Number:

9780822337461