Sometime you want to celebrate 100 pictures of Shane, and sometimes you want to celebrate looking femme, you know?

Let’s get started with this gallery of pin-up girls, from classic to modern:

Images of pin-up girls were called that because people pinned them to their walls. They sometimes featured models or actresses of the “sex-symbol” variety, i.e., Betty Grable, Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe, but also sometimes didn’t. Both classic pin-up girls and modern recreations of classic pin-up images tend to feature the following things:

+ Soft-looking, often curly, almost always retro-styled hair.
+ Garter belts and stockings.
+ Billowing dresses or skirts.
+ Lots of cleavage, of the front or back variety, because of strategic leaning or clothing readjustment.
+ “Tasteful” (i.e., tragic lack of) nudity.
+ Self-conscious awareness of the camera/gaze, or
+ No awareness of the camera/gaze, or
+ Making fun of the camera/gaze.
+ Underpants.

Sometimes, they would be old-school photoshopped. A lot of the time, they would be constructed for the hetero male gaze — but in a self-aware way suggesting complicity with that gaze. Modern recreations of pin-up poses are also usually constructed, but in a way that (can) make fun of that construction and some of the traditional gender roles implicit in it. Besides, who doesn’t love a 50s pin-up girl?

Excellent places to see more pin-ups include The Pin-Up Post, The Pin-Up Gal, Shameless Photography and iheartbrooklyngirls.

Another problem with early (and, frequently, modern) pin-ups was/is the lack of racial diversity. This slideshow, with 1950s pin-up girls and burlesque art, is a collection of some of the images that were out there:

You can also find lesbian vintage things at Vintage Lesbian, History Butch, Fuck Yeah Queer Vintage and Lez Get Historical.

Also, this week in sex:

+ Babeland has a new gender expression category for people interested in packing, chest binders, strap-ons/harnesses, stand-to-pee devices and recommended toys.

+ 57 years’ worth of Playboy magazines are now online.

+ Salon ran an article on “orgasmic meditation” that is mostly about women and orgasms and “the ‘upper left quadrant’ of the clitoris.”

+ Finally, it’s still May, so it’s still National Masturbation Month. You do you.

via xdyke

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