The Original Photoshop: Classic Pin-up Art Before and Afters

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bgg2wl: Body Image

Friday, February 17, 2012

The Original Photoshop: Classic Pin-up Art Before and Afters

Imagine my surprise when I learned that even these paintings were altered a lil' bit! ...

by Erika Nicole Kendall

Once upon a time, Adobe didn’t exist. We didn’t have Photoshop. How, on Earth, did we manage to make our women beautiful?

Pardon me as I roll my eyes for a moment.

I’m a person who loves pin-up art. Not only because I think the fashion kinda rocks, but because the women were these beautiful curvacious women who I’ve always felt some kind of kinship with. Sisterhood of the curvaceous hips, or something.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that even these paintings were altered a lil’ bit!

Check out 15 other photo/painting comparisons here.

tagged: airbrushing, paintings, pin-up art, retouching, the photoshop diet

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16 Responses to “The Original Photoshop: Classic Pin-up Art Before and Afters”

Grace @ Healthy Dreaming

1

Wow thanks for sharing. I used to think wow these pin-ups were SO thin around the waist and wished I had the “hour glass” figure.
Reply
Dayna

2

I still think they are beautiful and not as “photoshopped” like the women are today.
Reply
Kirsten

3

The thing that is most upsetting about this is the way women’s images are altered to reflect and ideal that DOES NOT EXIST!!! It’s such a mindf*ck.
Reply
Che

4

I love your blog and its many informative commponents. It has truly inspired me in my weight loss journey. My questions are, why use photos of white people as examples of things for black people to be aware of?
Reply
- Erika Nicole Kendall
  
  4.1
  
  …because being Black doesn’t mean you’re removed from the dominant culture. LOTS of us grew up looking at these photos and felt like we could relate to them because the women were curvaceous. Seeing that even these women were, in fact, real and “touched up a bit” matters.
  
  I mean, I get it, but I think this is mildly petty. The fact that the original stills of these portraits have come out and become viral is more important to my goal of dissecting body image and stigmas than making sure the women in the pictures are Black. Sorry.
  Reply
  - osusmith
    
    4.1.1
    
    Agreed.
    Reply
    - CoCo
      
      4.1.1.1
      
      ….besides, there were a few black Vargas girl pinups and they were drawn the same way the white ones were; smaller waists, larger breasts, etc. The skin color doesn’t seem to matter. The women were all drawn with unrealistic body types.
      Reply
      - Erika Nicole Kendall
        
        4.1.1.1.1
        
        Now, I was ABSOLUTELY thinking of Vargas girls – which is how, I think, a LOT of us became familiar with these kinds of pin-up-esque portraits – when I posted these. Glad to know I was closer to accurate than I thought. LOL
        Reply
T.R.

5

I love pin up and retro styling too. To be honest never really thought about those pictures, because I assumed they were painted from scratch. It looks to me as if the “models” were a starting point and not necessarily supposed to be the “finished” product but I think you point is still valid in showing us how images are created and how we have to be careful of who and what we try and emulate.
Reply
Adrienne

6

I definitely noticed a difference in certain portraits (#s 20, 19, 15, 9, 3, 2) in waist size, but I made note of was the alteration in hair and facial features most of all.
Reply
Kjen

7

Interesting to know that even in the “good old days” images were retouched. I have stopped using stars and models photos for inspiration since I started realizing how the images are not reflecting the work outs and diets that I’m reading about especially with celebrity photos.
Reply
Nicole (akascholar)

8

I liked the before’s BETTER!
Reply
- Phyllis
  
  8.1
  
  I adore pin up art. Most of the women are all full figured and they look very sexy.
  Reply
Gigi

9

We (general) neglect to remember that women of the 40s and 50s wore girdles, bullet bras, petticoats, etc to achieve the looks we see in vintage editorials and classic Hollywood movies, so they weren’t any more “perfect” than women of today. The only difference between then and now was that the hour-glass shape was the ideal (which also meant thin women wore padding and/or petticoats to achieve this ideal shape, hence why Audrey Hepburn received so much flack in the 50s), rather than the boyish body shape.
Reply
atribitt

10

ERICA, you know what I’d like to see on this blog? Photoshop (and now painted) edits of MEN! I know this blog focuses on women, but it’s not just us! Besides, it would make me feel soooo much better to see that it’s not just women. And I’d also like to see what societies view of a perfect man’s body looks like.
Reply
Vicki A.

11

First off, I love your site, and thoughfulness in your content/writing. Kudos! Regarding this post, I totally get your purpose in posting these, and to add to the discussion I have to say that unfortunately, it’s “silly” (for lack of a better term) to think that anything isn’t retouched. All art is skewed reality, an interpretation of what really happened, even journalism, and especially photography. That’s not to invalidate it, that’s just a fact. Pin-ups were among the earliest in modern commercial art, but it goes back to the inception of art, whenever man began depicting his reality through his own perspective. So besides the meaningfulness of this particular content (women) and it’s particular skewing (retouching), I feel it could be useful to take not just an informed or cynical approach, but a wider one. Perhaps considering an evolutionary context for why or how things are done could help us make it less loaded, or at least separate our own personal self-esteem from it. Hope that makes sense…
Reply

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