Tattoo Ideas: Pin Up Girls

Beginning in Europe in 1941, a pin-up girl was a glamour model or actress whose image was mass produced for use in calendars or on posters. During World War II, pin-up girls were considered sex symbols by American GIs fighting overseas, their photographs traded amongst comrades, kept in wallets and hung in tents. Drawings and paintings of what the "ideal" woman should look like and even popular celebrities fully clothed were considered to be pin-up material. Pin-up girls were the old school, old fashioned equivalent to the modern day Playboy bunnies, eliciting the same reaction from men then as they do now.

The most popular pin-up girl by far was Betty Grable, an American dancer, singer and actress with over fifty films in her repertoire whose shapely legs and notorious bathing suit photo made her the pin-up icon of World War II. Grable had to contend with stars such as Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Dorothy Lamour and Veronica Lake but was still able to keep her status as number one. Images of these favorite pin-up girls and others like them were frequently seen in nose art, the practice of decorating fighting aircraft during wartimes. And although pin-up girls were without a doubt the undisputed sex symbols of the first half of the 20th century, their photos were always tasteful and classy, hardly ever more revealing than a one-piece bathing suit--or maybe a bikini.

That all changed in the mid-1950s, as the war era yielded to the next generation, and a new pin-up girl emerged from Nashville, Tennessee. Bettie Page quickly became synonymous with beauty, being named "Miss Pinup Girl of the World" and "Girl With the Perfect Figure". Bettie Page did countless bathing suit photo shoots same as the pin-up queens from the previous decade, only she took it a step farther, often wearing a bikini and sometimes even going completely topless. Her photo sets included lingerie and whips, and took place in exotic jungle locales. Standing 5'5" tall and weighing 128 pounds, Bettie's "perfect figure" was a far cry from the emaciated role models that dominate the fashion industry in present day magazines and runways. Bettie Page's photographs have been replicated in the form of tattoos on the skin of men and women alike.

Although over the past few years a new trend of modernized pin-up girls has emerged (looking more like strippers than anything else, the new pin-ups are animated characters featuring long legs and unattainable proportions frequently showcased as vampires, zombies, devils and angels, good and bad) it is the traditional pin-up girls, the real beauties, who are most often depicted for the sake of tattooing.