Pin-up model

A pin-up model (also pin-up girl) and male pin-up is a model whose mass-produced pictures and photographs have wide appeal within the popular culture of a society. Pin-up models are usually glamour models, actresses, and fashion models whose pictures are intended for informal, aesthetic display, such as being pinned onto a wall. Moreover, beginning in the 1940s, pictures of pin-up girls were also known as cheesecake in the U.S. The term pin-up refers to drawings and paintings, illustrations and photographs of semi-naked women. The term pin-up was first attested to in English in 1941. Images of pin-up girls were published in magazines and newspapers, as postcards and as lithographs, and calendars. The counterpart of the pin-up girl is the male pin-up, also known as beefcake, including celebrated actors and athletes who appeal to girls, adolescents, and women, such as the actor James Dean, the singer Jim Morrison, and the male model Fabio. Beginning in the early 19th century, pin-up modeling had "theatrical origins"; burlesque performers and actresses sometimes used photographic advertisement as business cards to advertise shows. These promotion and business cards could often be found backstage in almost every theater's green room, pinned up or stuck into "frames of the looking-glasses, in the joints of the gas-burners, and sometimes lying on top of the sacred cast-case itself." According to historian Maria Elena Buszek, "To understand both the complicated identity and the subversive nature of the 19th-century actress, one must also understand that the era's views on women's potential were inextricably tied to their sexuality, which in turn was tied to their level of visibility in the public sphere: regardless of race, class or background, it was generally assumed that the more public the woman, the more 'public,' or available, her sexuality." Being sexually fantasized, famous actresses in early-20th-century film were both drawn and photographed and put on posters to be sold for personal use.