pinup: Definition and Much More from Answers.com

Pin-up photo of Ingrid Bergman for the March 16, 1945 issue of the U.S. Army magazine, Yank.

A pin-up girl or pin-up model is a model whose mass-produced pictures see wide appeal as pop culture. Pin-ups are intended for informal display. Pin-up girls are often glamour models, fashion models, and actresses.

"Pin-up" may also refer to drawings, paintings and other illustrations done in emulation of these photos (see the List of pinup artists). 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 G.I.s during World War II. Others pin-ups were artwork, often depicting idealized versions of what some thought a particularly 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.

The term “cheesecake” is synonymous with “pin-up photo”. The earliest documented print usage of this sense of “cheesecake” is in 1934 [1], predating “pin-up”, although anecdotes say the phrase was in spoken slang some 20 years earlier, originally in the phrase (said of a pretty woman) “better than cheesecake”.

These days men can be considered “pin ups” as well and there are male equivalents of attractive and sexy actors such as Harrison Ford or numerous male models. The counterpart term to “cheesecake” is “beefcake”.

Pin-up by Patrick Hitte

Famous pin-up girls

1910s and 1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

Other kinds of pin-ups

In comic books, a pin-up is simply a full-page piece of artwork, most often without dialogue, that showcases a character, group of characters, or significant event, published within a single issue or annual rather than made available by itself as a poster.

In professionally published fan magazines for films and television series, a posed photograph of actors or actresses from the subject matter, but might also showcase specific scenes from the subject matter in photograph form (called stills) are occasionally called pin-ups. The label is very casual, though, as these types of fan media are more accurately described as posters.

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		Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Pin-up girl". Read more
		Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more

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