Manga and Anime is ripe with unaware good girls and deliberately sultry bad women. This is a short salute to my personal favorite artists and characters.

Manga (‘comics’ in Japanese) and Anime (‘animation’ in Japanese) are not just “those cute girls with big tits and big eyes” (as demonstrated to the left). Although there’s a lot of that, and the Japanese are known to let go of all sexual inhibition, when it comes to their illustrated entertainment. I believe Manga and anime are a fine art, with many styles and agendas. After all, you wouldn’t say all Western comics are about super heroes, would you?

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Tags: Manga pinups, Chun Li , Anime pinups, Shinobu , Big Tits and Big Eyes, Sumeragi Natsuki , sailormoon, Fairy tales for adults, Junko Mizuno, Aeon Flux, Last Exile, Little kimono, Maestro Delphine Eraclea, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rei Ayanami, Street Fighter, sex kitten, Good Girls, Japanese pinup girls

How do I love pinups and let me count the ways...

Yes, I sat myself down and asked myself why it is I blog about pinups. It’s so trivial, it’s so silly and so horny! So why then? Here are 10 fine reasons!

#10 The Detail

I’m a sucker for good craftsmanship. Most people are. As an art student you learn to appreciate abstract art and god knows I love it, but there is always a special place in my heart for that artist that can really draw convincing fingernails and get deep into the garter-clasp details.


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Tags: pinup lovers, Nostalgia, garter-clasp details, king of pinups, Marilyn Monroe, Betty Page, straightforward sexuality, sexually explicit, pinup artists, Olivia De Bernardinis, retro style, Classic Sweetness, garter belts, Women, Voluptuous, Gil Elvgren, modern Venuses, Garters and Stockings, beauty and mystic, natural beauty, Low art, pornographic, Diversity, neo-pinups

Some pinup artists are skilled, sophisticated and patient enough to add a little technical challenge to their work - the mirror.

While looking for pinup twins a month ago, I found myself eyeing another pinup art practice - the mirrored pinup. I haven't managed to find an essay about the appearance of mirrors and reflections in a painting (let me know if you got the inside story via comment or email ), but I gather it’s an interesting research subject. In pinup art a lot of the profound meaning is shallowed out to eye-candy. I’m hoping to find some insight into the mirrored pinup.

Showing Off All Assets

As I said, in most pinup art, the profound possibilities of meaning are usually shallowed down to simple efficiency. In most cases, the pinup will be either facing the viewer, or with her back to the viewer and the mirror is there to show all the pinup’s assets - front to back.

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Tags: Through the Looking Glass, pinup artists, mirrors, mirrored pinup, WWII., Nazi propaganda, Enoch Bolles, Kevin Clark, being watched, self Portrait, glamor girls, Gil Elvgren, pinup assets

After writing last week’s cheesecake article, I was challenged at Digg, to find the beefcake twins. Knowing how hard it is to find beefcake at all, I rose to the challenge.

Where’s the beefcake?!

Apparently there just isn’t as much demand for male twins as female twins. This sailor image is the only vintage image I could find and it’s quite uninspired. I mean, this photo is so asexual could have been taken by their mother!

Fear not, my beefcake twin hungry mongrels! I’ve managed to hunt down a few modern day beefcake. It seems that twins have more fun than regular male models. Maybe it’s in the already playful nature of a twin photo shoot? Who knows.


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Tags: Beefcake Twins, Male model twins, sailor twins, The Stoltzfus Twins, Bruce Weber, Aaron and Shawn Ashmore, Keith and Derek Brewer, Jason and Joseph Barbera, Jason and Jeremy London, Twin actors, 1980's, Latino twins, Lane and Kyle Carlson, Portugal, Pedro and Ricardo Guedes, Pedro and Ricardo Guedes, Brazil, Flávio and Gustavo Mendonça

You’re not seeing double. This list compiles pinup twins from around the world and across history.

Like the bunny and the exotic dancer, the fantasy of twins has always been out there. Twins photograph incredibly, and automatically call to mind additional meaning to an image. Smart photographers and painters utilized their rarity in order to create a stunning image. I’m leaving the sexual stuff out of this list, as alluring as it may appear it’s incest and I’m just not that kind of blogger.

The Vintage Twins that Launched a Thousand Words

Not much is known about Edward D'Ancona, who very possibly had a severe book fetish. This pinup isn’t dated, and all we can assume is that it was painted between the mid 1930-1960, the years he was known to be an active calendar artist. That’s a big gap, and the painting doesn’t clue us in to much. Seeing as these glamor girls are naked, the only thing I could go by is the hair, which looks right about the right length and styling to be between the 1940-1950. But again, I don’t know for sure, so feel free to enlighten us with an email or comment, if you know better.

This is the pinup that inspired this article, because...
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Tags: Double Happiness, Retro Pinup Twins, Vintage twins, Greg Hildebrandt, Edward D'Ancona, Dahm Triplets, 1940, Allison Evans and Jessica Henry, Forniphilia, Playboy Twins, The Bentley sisters, Patrick Nagel, 1980's, 1950, objectification, 1960, Beauty Calender, Losing innocence, chinese pinup girls, 1970, Vespa Twins

Desperately looking for pinups in the undergrounds of Israel, I managed to completely overlook Nir Hod, part of the upper-ground art scene, in Israel.

Nir Hod is a young, yet established Israeli artist. His main visual focus is in dramatic, erotic kitsch, and his thematic focuses are life, death and beauty. Women and androgynous men are often represented in his art.

I’m not a fan of Hod’s, I don’t like his drama, nor his vain self-obsession, but I love a beautiful image and a job well done, and that’s something he produces in abundance.








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Tags: military bombshell, Nir Hod, Post Modern Pinups, Israeli artist, Forever, retro kitsch, narcissist beefcake, sexual icons, Erotic kitsch, Women in uniform, androgynous, sexualized female cadet, Israel Art Scene, effeminate soldier beefcake

While writing about biker art, and looking for female riders, I was reminded of those old, Italian, vintage Vespa posters. With all due respect to the roaring Harley, lets move on to the waspy hum of the Vespa.

Since the 1950's, anyone who’s ever visited Italy, especially Rome, knows the familiar site of pretty girls on their Vespa. Why is it that the Harley Davidson became a man’s vehicle, and the Piaggio Vespa became a woman’s Vehicle?

A Sissy Motorcycle

The original designer of Vespa, Corradino D'Ascanio, apparently didn’t see the fun of the motorcycle, and opted to create a sensible two-wheel mode of transportation.

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Tags: Vespa women, Oil-painted cheesecake, 1960, 1970, Jayne Mansfield, Raquel Welsh, Female riders, England, Vespa ads, Urssula Andress, Italian pinups, Vintage Vespa Posters, Harley Davidson, 1950's, Italy, Piaggio girls, Corradino D'Ascanio

A lot of noise has been raised in the feminist and Muslim communities over the art of Makan Emadi and the appearance of a new “misogynistic male fantasy”: Veil Fetish.

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Tags: Makan Emadi, misogynistic male fantasy, Veil Fetish, Islamic Erotica, Muslim Pinups, sexual stereotype, Degrating, sexualizing, Muslim women, Fantasy art

Israel is not huge on Pinups and, to me, as an Israeli, it's a bit of a surprise.

A fact that is well known to Israelis, is that Israel has a long history of mimicking fashion and commercial trends. Hardly a leader in it's own cultural right, Israel used to mimic Europe in the 40's, 50's and 60's. But as the political and financial scales tipped in America's favor, American business models and fashion trends have become more and more popular in Israel. As fashion and pop culture are inextricably linked, one can understand what African American pop culture is doing in Israel and why women's role-models become Carrie Bradshaw.

So Why Aren't Pinups Having their big comeback in Israel?

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Tags: Israeli pinups, 50's fashion trend, cheesecake fashions, Macao, 1950, Hello Kitty, pop-culture, pop art

As a pinup enthusiast, I have a little…tiny… OK petite collection of pinup memorabilia. I'm not a very active collector (I bow my head in shame), but I love picking up on a cool little piece, every now and then. My latest collectibles were found on the other side of the earth… China.

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Tags: pinup enthusiast, pinup memorabilia, pinup cards, Double Happiness Cigarettes, 1940, shanghai, Hong Kong, Beauty Calender, Western influence, cheesecake collection, The Venetian Macao, Las Vegas, chinese pinup girls, china, Macao