Pin-up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture | 
 enlarge | Author: Maria Buszek
Publisher: Duke University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 130835
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 444
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0822337460
Dewey Decimal Number: 760.04428
EAN: 9780822337461
ASIN: 0822337460
Publication Date: May 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
An important and entertaining book August 21, 2006
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
For anyone who doubts what a study of pin-ups might have to offer, prepare to be convinced otherwise! Buszek has composed a rich analysis of her subject, which while full of original ideas on the topic never loses sight of the fact that it's a book about pin-ups, images created to titilate and delight. The author's subtlety in interpreting the history of the pin-up, which turns out to be much longer than we might have thought, enables her to extract a number of fascinating threads which connect the genre to contemporary feminist art. It is a compelling and novel approach on a fascinating, under-researched topic. Buszek leaves her reader with a deeper understanding of the pin-up as a genre and of the feminist movement overall. A must-read for anyone interested in either topic, not to mention pop culture in general.
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