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A pin-up girl is a woman
whose physical attractiveness would entice one to place a picture of
her on a wall. The term was first attested to in English in 1941;
however the practice is documented back at least to the 1890s.
The pin up
images could be cut out of magazines or newspapers, or be from postcard
or chromo-lithographs, and so on. Such photos often appear on
calendars, which are meant to be pinned up anyway. Later, posters
of pin-up girls
were mass produced.
Many pin ups
were
photographs of celebrities who were considered sex symbols. One of the
most popular early pin-up girls was Betty Grable. Her poster was
ubiquitous in the lockers of GIs during World War II. Others pin-ups
were artwork, often depicting idealized versions of what some thought
particularly a beautiful or attractive woman should look like. An early
example of the latter type was the Gibson girl, drawn by Charles Dana
Gibson. The genre also gave rise to several well-known artists
specializing in the field, including Alberto Vargas and George Petty,
and numerous lesser artists such as Art Frahm.
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