Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture - Softcover

"With Pin-Up Grrrls, Buszek provides a unique blend of art, cultural, and women's histories that will engage a wide and diverse audience." -- Rachel Epp Buller * Woman's Art Journal * "Using the pin-up as an interpretative lens for probing complicated issues of women's sexual agency, Buszek offers a fascinating and lively . . . history of the American women's movement and its engagement with popular culture. Pin-Up Grrrls features ninety-four figures, many of which appear for the first time in print and provide ample visual support for her argument. . . . Buszek has tackled an enormous subject here, and her book should interest anyone looking for an overview of historical developments in feminist thought and female representation." -- Marlis Schweitzer * American Quarterly * "In Pin-Up Grrrls, feminist art scholar Buszek optimistically traces the development of feminism and the assertion of female sexuality in the public sphere through a well-illustrated focus on a 150-year history of the female pin-up. . . . Through meticulous research, presented in a chronological narrative structure, Buszek demonstrates the complex interaction between the pin-up and the historical contexts in which it articulates female sexuality." -- Hillegonda C. Rietveld * Feminist Review * "Buszek's academic background in art history allows her to convincingly dispute the notion of the pin-up as merely objectifying women, and her selection of archival images is a feast for the eyes. . . . BUST readers will still no doubt devour this intergenerational expose of how strong women asserted themselves, their whole selves-including those lovely legs, bodacious busts, and devilish derrieres." -- Amanda McCorquodale * BUST Magazine * "Pin-Up Grrrls is ultimately a tale of the feminist reclamation of female sexuality as much as it is the story of the pin-up. With great historical consciousness and painstaking research-and without falling back on tired old stereotypes of pro- or antiporn feminists-Buszek stakes a thoroughly convincing claim that feminism is a political movement that has always championed women's sexual agency and that is sure to appeal to grrrls and womyn alike." -- Rachel Fudge, Women's Review of Books "Pin-ups that women love? That they create? Yes! In her brilliantly vibrant debut book, Maria Elena Buszek gives a lucid, rich, and thorough account of a nineteenth- and twentieth-century history in which women employ the power of erotic imagery to celebrate themselves. From the writing to the reproductions, Pin-up Grrrls is eye-opening."-Joanna Frueh, performance artist and author of Swooning Beauty: A Memoir of Pleasure "Pin-Up Grrrls is a funny, sexy, political take on the pin-up. In this book, women flaunt their sexuality, use images of themselves to their own ends, and remake the pin-up genre in endlessly creative ways."-Susie Bright, author of Mommy's Little Girl: On Sex, Motherhood, Porn, and Cherry Pie

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.