Pinup Girls Magazine Covers 40's 50's and 60's Girlie Mags Golden Age of Hollywood

A Lethal Threat To Us Or The Real History of the Pinup Girls Magazine Covers 40's 50's and 60's World War Two helped to give a push to the pin-up industry which coincided with the Golden Age of Hollywood. For the first time, the government of the United States gave permission to soldiers to display racy pin-ups in their bunkers. planes or anywhere else.Show more

Innocent but erotic, cheesy as all hell and yet still oozing sex appeal — it’s truly an irrefutable fact that pin-up girls have one twisted tightrope to walk. But how did we get this icon of salaciously safe female sexuality? A figure that’s somehow suitable for the side of weapons, twee ironic tattoos, and more boudoir shoots than you can shake a stick at? Well, my friends, let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start) with the mother of all pin ups.

Go to any car or motorcycle show across the U.S. and you will surely see vehicles painted with murals of pinup girls. A lot of the top-selling products here at Lethal Threat depict images of sexy pinup girls.

Who was the first pinup girl, anyway, and what is the history of pinup girls? We thought it would make sense to look into the history of these sexy and sultry babes. Read on to learn all the inside dope you need to know about these gorgeous gals.

The popular belief is that the first pinup girl appeared around the time of World War II. The truth is the rise of the pinup precedes World War I. An unlikely invention called the bicycle can be credited with the birth of the pinup.

Women were only too happy to embrace the invention and widespread popularity of bicycles in the 19th century. For a woman, the bicycle, offered a sense of mobility and freedom never available before.

Women's emancipation on two wheels was no easy ride, however. From the get-go, there was much resistance from doctors and ministers to a woman riding a bicycle.

Doctors said riding this new contraption would damage a women's delicate reproductive organs, while ministers alluded to the evils of sexual self-stimulation while riding a bicycle.

The brave, emancipated woman who would have none of this nonsense also faced other higher. hurdles. During the 19th century, women were never supposed to expose too much skin or show off their curves outside of the bedroom. In those days, women were expected to wear floor-length dresses for the sake of modesty.

Riding a bicycle changed all that. With the excuse of riding a bike, ladies started to wear functional and form-fitting pants.

Now the shapes and curves previously hidden under flowing dresses began to emerge. The shapely feminine form became an everyday appearance tolerated and no doubt in many cases appreciated by members of the public.

In 1895, Charles Gibson, an illustrator who drew for Life magazine, was credited with drawing the first pinup girl. His renderings of well-endowed women with hourglass figures and full lips became known as Gibson Girls.

Gibson based his illustrations on American girls he came across in his travels. His Gibson Girl illustrations would appear in every issue of Life issue for more than 20 years.

As printing technology advanced, more magazines came into circulation. To build circulation, these new publications also featured images of unattainable, idealized American beauties.

Around 1903, the use of calendars started to gain popularity. Along with days and months of the year, images of a pinup girl began to adorn some of these calendars. Pinup girl calendars ensured sell-outs. Thus was born the calendar girl, mother of the pinup girl.

What would become the familiar pinup began to take shape in 1917. A division of pictorial publicity had been created by the U.S. government during World War I. The job of the division was to create propaganda that would further the war effort.

Realizing that sex sells, the U.S. government started to use pinup girls on recruitment posters. When men started returning home from the war, the women of the roaring 20s were not willing to surrender the freedom they had acquired while their husbands were away fighting in Europe. The overall atmosphere of liberation matched the increasingly revealing clothing mirrored in the ever-opening society.

Calendar illustrators helped push along this new era of women's liberation by depicting women in a more sexual and sensuous way. Ever more teasing and flirtatious, the pinup illustrations now began to appear on every newsstand.

During World War II, pinup illustrations were used in recruitment posters to gather troops to fight overseas and calendars to promote the purchase of war bonds. The Golden Age of Pinups had arrived. The American military commissioned pinup artists to raise soldiers' morale with exotic, erotic images.

Soldiers during World War II were exposed to pinup art daily. This sexy, saucy artwork decorated their barracks and the walls of ships and submarines. Pinups were painted on fighter planes and bombers and taped inside soldiers' helmets. The lovely ladies depicted in this artwork were a constant reminder of what soldiers, sailors and aviators were fighting for and awaiting them upon their return home.

After the war ended in 1945, the most famous pinup was Bettie Page. She is credited as the first pinup to successfully transition from illustration to photography.

Before Bettie Page, all pinup art was in the form of illustrations based on unknown women. Page was different. She was seen as a living, breathing pinup. She had a unique personality and style as well as looks.

Page's popularity escalated quickly. Her images appeared in countless publications and calendars across the land. To this day, Bettie Page is considered the most photographed and collected pinup girl in history.

With the launch of Playboy magazine in 1953, Hugh Hefner successfully molded his own publication around the image of the pinup girl. Knowing the future was in photography and not illustrated pinups, he pushed the limits of acceptable nudity and morality further and further in the growing medium.

As retro design, art and products become interesting and inspirational for legions of people today, the pinup's popularity is on the rise again. Although her origins date back to the 19th century, it appears the pinup is here to stay.

The pinup model of today comes in all shapes, sizes and ethnic backgrounds. She will carry her proud tradition of liberation and beauty far into the future.

The Gibson Girl was a personification of the feminine ideal of physical attractiveness portrayed by artist Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period that spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States. She represented the visual ideal of the phenomenon of the "New Woman," an independent and often well-educated young woman poised to enjoy a more visible and active role in the public arena than women of preceding generations. The Gibson Girl was defined as an emancipated post-Victorian era woman who wore daringly tight corsets to create an hourglass figure and wore her hair long, pulled back into an updo bouffant or pompadour style. The Gibson Girls, a group from Jerseyville, Illinois, is not related to the Gibson Girl.

The Gibson Girl image that appeared in the 1890s combined elements of older American images of contemporary female beauty, such as the "fragile lady" and the "voluptuous woman". From the "fragile lady" she took the basic slender lines, and a sense of respectability. From the "voluptuous woman" she took a large bust and hips, but was not vulgar or lewd, as previous images of women with large busts and hips had been depicted. From this combination emerged the Gibson Girl, who was tall and slender, yet with ample bosom, hips and buttocks. She had an exaggerated S-curve torso shape achieved by wearing a swan-bill corset. Images of her epitomized the late 19th- and early 20th-century Western preoccupation with youthful features and ephemeral beauty. Her neck was thin and her hair piled high upon her head in the contemporary bouffant, pompadour, and chignon ("waterfall of curls") fashions. The statuesque, narrow-waisted ideal feminine figure was portrayed as being at ease and stylish.

She was a member of upper middle class society, always perfectly dressed in the latest fashionable attire appropriate for the place and time of day. The Gibson Girl was also one of the new, more athletic-shaped women, who could be found cycling through Central Park, often exercised and was emancipated to the extent that she could enter the workplace. In addition to the Gibson Girl's refined beauty, in spirit, she was calm, independent and confident, and sought personal fulfillment. She could be depicted attending college and vying for a good mate, but she would never have participated in the suffrage movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Gibson_Girl

Taking part in the suffrage movement was something more associated with the New Woman, another cultural image of women that emerged around the same time as the Gibson Girl. As a more popular version of the New Woman, the Gibson Girl both undermined and sanctioned women's desires for progressive sociopolitical change. The New Woman was the more disconcerting of the two images at the time as she was seen as an example of change and disruption within the old patterns of social order, asking for the right to equal educational and work opportunities as well as progressive reform, sexual freedom and suffrage. Whilst the Gibson Girl took on many characteristics of the New Woman, she did so without involving herself in politics and thus did not appear to contemporaries at the time to be usurping traditionally masculine roles as the New Woman was deemed to. She therefore managed to stay within the boundaries of feminine roles without too much transgression.

Gibson depicted her as an equal and sometimes teasing companion to men. She was also sexually dominant, for example, literally examining comical little men under a magnifying glass, or, in a breezy manner, crushing them under her feet. Next to the beauty of a Gibson Girl, men often appeared as simpletons or bumblers; and even men with handsome physiques or great wealth alone could not provide satisfaction to her. Gibson illustrated men so captivated by her looks that they would follow her anywhere, attempting to fulfill any desire, even if it was absurd. One memorable drawing shows dumbstruck men following a Gibson Girl's command to plant a young, leafless tree upside-down, roots in the air, simply because she wanted it that way. Most often, a Gibson Girl appeared single and uncommitted. However, a romance always relieved her boredom. Once married, she was shown deeply frustrated if romantic love had disappeared from her life, but satisfied if socializing with girlfriends or happy when doting on her infant child. In drawings such as these there was no hint at pushing the boundaries of women's roles; instead they often cemented the long-standing beliefs held by many from the old social orders, rarely depicting the Gibson Girl as taking part in any activity that could be seen as out of the ordinary for a woman.

Theda Bara was a famous silent film actress who played a femme fatale "vamp" in the 1915 film "A Fool There Was". She mystified audiences by falsely claiming to be the Parisian daughter of Arabian and French artists. Bara introduced the word "vamp" to the vocabulary and was one of Hollywood's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp". The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman. Bara's fabricated exotic and erotic persona was an early product of the movie industry's publicity machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theda_Bara

Bara was one of the more popular actresses of the silent era and one of cinema's early sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" (short for vampire, here meaning a seductive woman),[a] later fueling the rising popularity in "vamp" roles based in exoticism and sexual domination.[5] The studios promoted a fictitious persona for Bara as an Egyptian-born woman interested in the occult. Bara made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, but most are now lost, having been destroyed in the 1937 Fox vault fire.

An "It girl" is an attractive young woman, who is perceived to have both sex appeal and a personality that is especially engaging.

The expression it girl originated in British upper-class society around the turn of the 20th century. It gained further attention in 1927 with the popularity of the Paramount Studios film It, starring Clara Bow. In the earlier usage, a woman was especially perceived as an "it girl" if she had achieved a high level of popularity without flaunting her sexuality. Today, the term is used more to apply simply to fame and beauty. The Oxford English Dictionary distinguishes between the chiefly American usage of "a glamorous, vivacious, or sexually attractive actress, model, etc.", and the chiefly British usage of "a young, rich woman who has achieved celebrity because of her socialite lifestyle". The terms "it boy" or "it man" are sometimes used to describe a male exhibiting similar traits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_girl

Evelyn Nesbit (born Florence Evelyn Nesbit; December 25, 1884 or 1885 – January 17, 1967) was an American artists' model, chorus girl, and actress. She is best known for her career in New York City, as well as the obsessive and abusive fixation of her husband, railroad scion Harry Kendall Thaw on both Nesbit and architect Stanford White, which resulted in White's murder by Thaw in 1906.

As a model, Nesbit was frequently photographed for mass circulation newspapers, magazine advertisements, souvenir items and calendars. When in her early teens, she had begun working as an artist's model in Philadelphia. Nesbit continued after her family moved to New York, posing for legitimate artists including James Carroll Beckwith, Frederick S. Church and notably Charles Dana Gibson, who idealized her as a "Gibson Girl". She began modeling when both fashion photography (as an advertising medium) and the pin-up (as an art genre) were beginning to expand.

Nesbit entered Broadway theatre, initially as a chorus line dancer before becoming a featured star. A variety of wealthy men vied for her company including Stanford White, 32 years her senior. In 1905, Nesbit married Thaw, a multi-millionaire with a history of mental instability and abusive behavior. The next year, on June 25, 1906, Thaw shot and killed White at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden.

The press called the resulting court case the "Trial of the Century", coverage of which was sensational. Nesbit testified that White had befriended her and her mother, but had drugged and then raped her when she was unconscious. White continued his abusive control for several years after raping Nesbit. Thaw was said to have killed White in retaliation for his actions with Nesbit, based on his own obsession with her.

Nesbit visited Thaw while he was confined to mental asylums. She toured Europe with a dance troupe, and her son, Russell Thaw, was born there. Later she took the boy with her to Hollywood, where she appeared as an actress in numerous silent films. Nesbit wrote two memoirs about her life, published in 1914 and 1934. She died in Santa Monica, California, in 1967.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Nesbit

Flappers were a subculture of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts (knee height was considered short during that period), bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were seen as brash for wearing excessive makeup, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes in public, driving automobiles, treating sex in a casual manner, and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms. As automobiles became more available, flappers gained freedom of movement and privacy.

Flappers are icons of the Roaring Twenties, the social, political turbulence, and increased transatlantic cultural exchange that followed the end of World War I, as well as the export of American jazz culture to Europe. There was a reaction to this counterculture from more conservative people, who belonged mostly to older generations. They claimed that the flappers' dresses were "near nakedness", and that flappers were "flippant", "reckless", and unintelligent.

While primarily associated with the United States, the "modern girl" archetype was a worldwide phenomenon that had other names depending on the country, such as joven moderna in Argentina or garçonne in France, although the American term "flapper" was the most widespread internationally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapper

Modern girls (モダンガール, modan gāru) (also shortened to moga) were Japanese women who followed Westernized fashions and lifestyles in the period after World War I.

Moga were Japan's equivalent of America's flappers, Germany's neue Frauen, France's garçonnes, or China's modeng xiaojie (摩登小姐). By viewing moga through a Japanese versus Western lens, the nationalist press could use the modern girl archetype to blame such failings as frivolity, sexual promiscuity, and selfishness on foreign influence. The period was characterized by the emergence of working class young women with access to money and consumer goods. Using aristocratic culture as their standard of Japaneseness, the critics of the modern girl condemned her working class traits as "unnatural" for Japanese. Modern girls were depicted as living in the cities, being financially and emotionally independent, choosing their own suitors, and apathetic towards politics. The woman's magazine was a novelty at this time, and the modern girl was the model consumer, someone more often found in advertisements for cosmetics and fashion than in real life. The all-female Takarazuka Revue, established in 1914, and the novel Naomi (1924) are outstanding examples of modern girl culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_girl

Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She was featured in 90 theatrical cartoons between 1930 and 1939. She has also been featured in comic strips and mass merchandising.

A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper, Betty Boop was described in a 1934 court case as "combin[ing] in appearance the childish with the sophisticated—a large round baby face with big eyes and a nose like a button, framed in a somewhat careful coiffure, with a very small body of which perhaps the leading characteristic is the most self-confident little bust imaginable". Although she was toned down in the mid-1930s as a result of the Hays Code to appear more demure, she became one of the world's best-known and most popular cartoon characters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Boop

Josephine Baker, a dancer, entertainer, civil rights activist, and French resistance agent, is best known for her boundary-pushing 'Banana Dance', in which she danced wearing nothing but a skirt made of artificial bananas and a pearl necklace. This dance established her as the biggest black female star in the world, and thousands of dolls in banana skirts were sold all over Europe. The image of a dancing Josephine Baker, clad in pasties and a skirt made of rubber bananas, is something of a cultural icon. Today, the skirt's meaning is different from when Baker first wore it in 1926. Baker's unapologetic embodiment of Black femininity and a strong sense of identity cemented her as an iconic figure, not just in dance but across her many exploits.

https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Josephine_Baker

Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, Siren of the Tropics, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant. Baker's career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France. She became one of the most successful African American performers in French history, symbolizing the beauty and vitality of Black American culture, which took Paris by storm in the 1920s. Baker's contributions to the French Resistance movement and her beauty and innovative performance style earned her notoriety.

The pin-up boom was quite evident in the 1940s and the 1950s. The pinups have a very interesting history and some popular pin up models had a significant impact on American culture, especially Marilyn Monroe who was considered to be the first pin up girl.

To the average person, a pin-up girl is nothing more but a scantily clad or nude woman who is sometimes featured on a piece of paper that can be taken out of an album and displayed anywhere.

Such as college dorm room walls, famous pin-up girls hung from fighter bombers during WWII to show your troops you love them. A pin up girl was used for propaganda during World War II. American soldiers in World War II had pin up girl posters on the walls in their barracks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin-up_model

American burlesque is a genre of variety show derived from elements of Victorian burlesque, music hall and minstrel shows. Burlesque became popular in the United States in the late 1860s and slowly evolved to feature ribald comedy and female nudity. By the late 1920s, the striptease element overshadowed the comedy and subjected burlesque to extensive local legislation. Burlesque gradually lost popularity beginning in the 1940s. A number of producers sought to capitalize on nostalgia for the entertainment by recreating burlesque on the stage and in Hollywood films from the 1930s to the 1960s. There has been a resurgence of interest in this format since the 1990s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_burlesque

The term "burlesque" more generally means a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. Burlesque in literature and in theatre through the 19th century was intentionally ridiculous in that it imitated several styles and combined imitations of certain authors and artists with absurd descriptions. Burlesque depended on the reader's (or listener's) knowledge of the subject to make its intended effect, and a high degree of literacy was taken for granted.

Victorian burlesque, sometimes known as "travesty" or "extravaganza" was popular in London theatres between the 1830s and the 1890s. It took the form of musical theatre parody in which a well-known opera, play or ballet was adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, often risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work, and quoting or pastiching text or music from the original work. The comedy often stemmed from the incongruity and absurdity of the classical subjects, with realistic historical dress and settings, being juxtaposed with the modern activities portrayed by the actors. The dialogue was generally written in rhyming couplets, liberally peppered with bad puns. A typical example from a burlesque of Macbeth: Macbeth and Banquo enter under an umbrella, and the witches greet them with "Hail! hail! hail!" Macbeth asks Banquo, "What mean these salutations, noble thane?" and is told, "These showers of 'Hail' anticipate your 'reign'". A staple of theatrical burlesque was the display of attractive women in travesty roles, dressed in tights to show off their legs, but the plays themselves were seldom more than modestly risqué.

Burlesque on film and Burlesque shows have been depicted in numerous Hollywood films starting with Applause, a 1929 black-and-white backstage musical talkie directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Others include King of Burlesque (1936), starring Warner Baxter; Lady of Burlesque (1943) starring Barbara Stanwyck; Delightfully Dangerous (1945) starring Constance Moore; Two Sisters from Boston (1946), starring Kathryn Grayson; Queen of Burlesque (1946), starring Evelyn Ankers; Linda, Be Good (1947), starring Elyse Knox; and She's Working Her Way Through College (1952), starring Virginia Mayo. Gypsy (1962), starring Natalie Wood, and The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968), starring Jason Robards, depicted burlesque of the 1920s and 1930s. Other films that include burlesque characters include Ball of Fire, a 1941 screwball comedy starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. Additionally, many of the comedies of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello feature classic burlesque routines, such as "The Lemon Table," "Crazy House," and "Slowly I Turned/Niagra Falls."

Low-budget documentations of extant burlesque shows began with Hollywood Revels (1946), where a regular production was staged in a theater and photographed from a distance. In 1947, film producer W. Merle Connell re-staged the action in a studio, where he could control the camerawork, lighting and sound, providing close-ups and other studio photographic and editorial techniques. His 1951 production French Follies recreates a classic American burlesque presentation. Some figures from the 1950s indicate that burlesque films could cost upwards of $50,000 to produce, but Dan Sonney states that most only cost about $15,000 because they were shot quickly and often done in less than a day.

Burlesque films, by burlesque impresario Lillian Hunt, filmed at the Follies Theatre in Los Angeles include Too Hot to Handle (1955), also known as Fig Leaf Frolics, Midnight Frolics (1949), Everybody's Girl (1951), Hollywood Peep Show (1953), Peek-A-Boo (1953), The A-B-C's of Love (1954), and Kiss Me Baby (1957).

Later, other producers entered the field, using color photography and even location work. Naughty New Orleans (1954) is an example of burlesque entertainment on film, equally showcasing girls and gags, although it shifts the venue from a burlesque-house stage to a popular nightclub. Photographer Irving Klaw filmed a very profitable series of burlesque features, usually featuring star pin-up girl Bettie Page and various lowbrow comedians (including future TV star Joe E. Ross). Page's most famous features are Striporama (1953), Varietease (1954) and Teaserama (1955). These films, as their titles imply, were only teasing the viewer: the girls wore revealing costumes, but there was never any nudity. In the late 1950s, however, provocative films emerged, sometimes using a "nudist colony" format, and the relatively tame burlesque-show film died out.

In the golden age of pinups, there were many magazines dedicated to this sultry genre including Pep, Titter and Wink. Most vintage pin ups from the ’40s and ’50s featured buxom, glamorous female models showing off their curves in corsets, vintage panties, and vintage lingerie.

1. Betty Brosmer
Betty Brosmer is a household name, and she was the highest pinup model in the 1950s. She started her modeling career at the young age of 13 and is known to have won over 50 beauty contests. She was also a trailblazer and appeared on about 300 magazine covers. Her career as a pinup model began when she started working with the pinup photographer Keith Bernard. Now Betty Brosmer wasn’t Keith’s first high profile client; he also worked with legends such as Jayne Mansfield as well as Marilyn Monroe. She got the title “The most gorgeous body of the 50s” due to her amazing body measurements, 38-18-36 (inches), and 95-45-91 in centimeters.

She was born on August 2 in 1935, in California. Her first magazine photo-shoot was for the Sears and Roebuck magazine in the 40’s. From then on, she appeared regularly in the magazine advertisements, roadside billboards, milk cartons, and even trade catalogs. She actually became the first model to get a piece of the earnings whenever her picture was posted. She was the international standard of beauty well before Marilyn Monroe came onto the scene. Her career as a pinup model was short-lived and didn’t go past the 1950s, but that was in no way the end of her career. She later married a successful bodybuilder Joe Weider, who was also the creator of Mr and Ms’ Olympia. Betty wrote many books on bodybuilding and fitness and is still a leading figure on the topics.

2. Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe is a pivotal part of the Golden Age of Hollywood. This Hollywood legend did not have the easiest life, and it ended in her tragic death at the age of 36. Marilyn Monroe, previously known as Norma Jeanne Mortenson, was blessed with exquisite features and was loved by both men and women. Her modeling and Hollywood career began after the army photographer David Conover noticed her when he was covering the ammunitions factory to showcase women in the war effort. He was mesmerized by her beauty and used her in many of her photographs.

Soon the beauty left her husband and signed a contract with Twentieth Century Fox. She started off with low key films but then got leading roles in movies such as Niagara, All about Eve, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire. She soon becomes an iconic figure of Hollywood fashion as well as glamour. After being cast again and again as a bombshell, Marilyn wanted something more serious, and so she pursued method acting. She was later nominated for the Golden Globe Best Actress Award for her highly acclaimed film Bus Stop in the year 1956. Those who have met her state that she carried light inside her, that she seemed to glow at all times despite the difficult life she had. Marilyn Monroe captivated hearts all over the world with her beautiful smile, her sensual figure, and her sweet personality. She will forever be remembered for her grace and charm.

3. Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Bardot is a singer, actress and animal activist that was quite popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Bardot is remembered as the first liberated women in the post-war era in France. She lived a highly controversial life, and her career started in 1949 when she landed the cover of Elle magazine at the mere age of 15. Every woman wanted to look like her, and all the men drooled over her beauty, Bardot became an international sex symbol as soon as her career as a model and actress took off.

During her career, she appeared in many films such as Viva Maria and Contempt, but her career as an actress was short-lived, and she retired in the 1970s. She then devoted her life to becoming an animal activist.

Bardot was known to push the limits, and her sexually liberated young character in the film, And God Created Women in 1956, was a trailblazer. The sensual dynamic sand daring nudity became popular among the public, and she was catapulted into stardom. Bardot became famous for her free-flowing and naturalistic sensuality, and she soon became the top actress in Europe.

Bridgette Bardot’s status as a global phenomenon and an icon of beauty is still celebrated by many in the field of fashion and art.

4. Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield was a popular American actress that was known for her bombshell looks. She was a household name in the 1950s and 60s. The actress was born on April 19, 1933, in Pennsylvania. Mansfield was well known for her well-publicized publicity stunts such as wardrobe malfunctions and personal life.

Her pinup career, as well as her Hollywood career, catapulted in the 1950s, and she was offered dozens of roles in movies such as The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, Kiss Them for Me, and It Takes a Thief. She has a short-lived acting career, but she had many box office successes, and she even won a Golden Globe as well as a Theatre World Award.

Promises! Promises! was the first movie that ever showcased a nude actress, and Mansfield played the lead. The movie was so controversial at that time that it got banned in some states. Mansfield followed in the footsteps of Marilyn Monroe and was the Playboy Playmate of February in 1955. Mansfield was more than just a beautiful face; she was also a classically trained violinist and pianist.

Jayne Mansfield garnered nationwide publicity when her top mysteriously fell off in the pool at the media gathering if Underwater in Florida film. This conveniently happened in front of dozens of journalists. Even though she worked in many films, Mansfield was more famous for her photos rather than her movies.

5. Gina Lollobrigida
Gina Lollobrigida was a professional photographer and an Italian Actress who was known for her onscreen sexual persona. Lollobrigida was called the Mona Lisa of the 20th Century. The Italian beauty was born in Italy and studied sculpting and painting. She was the daughter of a carpenter and won dozens of beauty contents even before she became a star. Lollobrigida spent most of her teen as well as the early twenties modeling and came third in the Miss Italia Pageant.

She denied Howard Hughes offer to work in America, but she was a part of many American movies that were shot in Europe. Her acting chops in the 1953 film Bread, Love and Dreams were awarded a BAFTA nomination for which she then won the Nastro d’Agento award. This catapulted her career to international stardom. Her career spanned over five decades, and she became known as the Most Beautiful Woman in the World as well as Beautiful but Dangerous. Throughout her career, she has been nominated for the Golden Globes three times, one of which she won in 1961. She also has six David di Donatello awards under her belt.

She has claimed many times that she became an actress by mistake, but once her career began, the industry was never the same again.

6. Raquel Welch
Welch is an actress that was considered a sex goddess in the 1960s and 1970s. The beauty did appear in a dozen films, but she is more famous for her buxom pinup. Welch was born as Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940, in Chicago. She took many modeling jobs during her teen years and won dozens of beauty contests. She appeared in the fictional film One Million Years: BC that changed her life.

Her first mainstream appearance was in a bikini on the cover of Life Magazine, and after that, she began working on the ABC series Hollywood Palace. Her first major movie role was in Roustabout that also starred Elvis Presley; next, she appeared in the movie A House Is Not a Home, in which she played a prostitute. She later signed a contract with 20th Century Fox. Welch appeared in many movies, and some of them were hits. Nevertheless, she has proven herself as a durable figure in the constantly changing world of Hollywood and has made a name for herself.

Welch, like most pinup models on this list, also appeared in the Playboy magazine and became a sex symbol. Contrary to popular belief, Welch never actually did a nude scene in a film or even a photo-shoot. In order to escape her bombshell persona, she even titled her autobiography ‘Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage.’

7. Yvonne De Carlo
Yvonne De Carlo was an American actress, singer, and dancer of Canadian descent. She is most famous for her role as Moses’ wife in the Ten Commandments as well as her role as the vampire matriarch in the series The Munsters. A beautiful brunette with blue-green eyes and curvy figure, Yvonne De Carlo was one of the most recognizable famous in the golden era of Hollywood. She spent most of her teens and her early twenties performing in various night clubs.

She began her Hollywood career in 1941 with a role in a movie called Harvard, Here I Come. She acted in many movies, and her work in B grade western films garnered her stardom. Her role in the drama Salome Where She Danced and Song of Scheherazade in 1947 helped launch her career to great heights. The beauty received two separate stars on the Hollywood walk of fame for her work in films and TV.

After her work in the Munsters, she rose to fame again in 1971 when she portrayed an aging bombshell in Follies, a film by Stephen Sondheim. In the final stage of her career, she appeared in movies and shows like Here Come the Munsters and American Gothic. Her career lasted half a century, and she died of heart failure on January 2007.

8. Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner was an American actress who was born on December 24, 1922, in North Carolina. She was famous for playing sultry, femme fatale roles, and her marriage to the Hollywood legends Frank Sinatra, Mickey Rooney, and Artie Shaw. Gardner went from rags to riches and became famous in the 1950s as one of the most beautiful women in the World. She was a remarkable combination of not just beauty but sultriness, men lusted after Ava.

Ava Gardner’s striking dark hair and green eyes caught the eye of MGM’s biggest star Mickey Rooney when she was just a teenager. Rooney and Gardner married, but unfortunately, the marriage didn’t last, and they divorced a year later. After acting in bit parts, Gardner finally got a hit in the 1940s film The Killers. She then worked with co-stars, just as Clark Gabel and Tyrone Power. In 1953 Gardner earned her only academy award for the film Mogambo, the following year, she starred in The Barefoot Contessa, which was a box-office success and is said by many to be her signature film.

Her relationship with Frank Sinatra was one of the romances of the century, according to Peoples Magazine. It was her third and last marriage. She later moved to England, and that was the end of her career. In 1999 she died due to pneumonia at the age of 67.

9. Rita Hayworth
With her sultry moves and her exotic features, Latin bombshell Rita Hayworth became one of the biggest stars of the 1940s and one of the most popular pin-up girls of world war two. Rita Hayworth was a successful dancer before she was an actress; she really did have it all. Hayworth had looks, she had skills, and she had acting chops.

Margarita Carmen Cancino was born on October 17, 1918, in New York City and changed her name to Rita Hayworth to help her start her acting career. Columbia had a big hand in creating Rita Hayworth to some extent, they raised her hairline, they made her go through painful electrolysis and they hanged her hair color but with all that you need to deliver with talent and Hayworth did.

After co-starring with Carrey Grant in the 1939 film only angels have wings, Hayworth was dubbed the great American Love Goddess by Life magazine and became the sex symbol of the time. The Life magazine picture of Rita Hayworth kneeling on the bed in black lingerie was a striking image, and it became the most popular pinup image of the day for the GIs serving overseas. From 1944 to 1947, she was considered the top box-office broads in the World. She later left Hollywood and married Prince Ali Khan and caused a media frenzy. Hayworth went through five marriages and just couldn’t find the right person. Hayworth died in 1987 after suffering from substance abuse and Alzheimer’s.

10. Betty Grable
Betty Grable was a singer, dancer, model and pinup girl who was born in 1916. She did more than forty films in the 1930s and the 1940s, and she was in the top 10 box office stars for 12 consecutive years. Her mother helped her get into Hollywood, and Grable was soon involved in many Hollywood projects.

Her career actually started out with a lie when her mother lied about Garble’s age in order to get acting jobs. This helped Garble many minor roles in movies such as New Movietone Follies, Whoopee!, Happy Days and Let’s Go Places. Her first substantial part was in the film By Your Leave in 1934. One of her biggest roles was in a film called College Swing.

During her career, world war two was at its peak, and Hollywood was making escapist films. Garbles’ beauty and freshness attracted GI’s, and her posters were one of the most sold pinups at that time. She didn’t tour outside the States, but she did donate her things for the troops. In 1942 she sent about 54.00 autographed photos to the soldiers at Camp Robinson; this was in reply to the letters she had received by them. A slogan popular among the GI was “I want to marry a girl just like the girl that married Henry James.”

Her contract with Fox ended in 1953, right around the time when Marilyn Monroe stardom was rising. She later divorced her husband and kept working in TV and stage until her death in 1973 due to cancer.

11. Jane Russell
Jane Russell was an American actress that came to fame in the 1940’s when her curvaceous figure came under the limelight during the publicity campaign for her movie The Outlaw. Russell also has the honor of starring alongside the Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe in the film ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.’

Russell was born on February 21 in 1921, and she started her acting career when Howard Hughes cast her in the film The Outlaw, she was just a teenager at the time. Most of her movies were either musicals or westerns; her most notable movie was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Russell did numerous movies and had the acting chops, but her size 38D chest was what she became famous for. In a 1943 U.S Navy poll, Jane Russell was chosen as the girl that they would like to have waiting for them in every port. She worked on many other projects after The Outlaw, such as The Paleface, Young Widow, Montana Belle, and she returned for the sequel Son of Paleface.

Jane Russell was unable to have biological kids, and she stated that it might be due to the back alley abortion she had in her teen years. So she adopted three children and was also married three times. The beautiful actress passed away in 2011 due to respiratory-related illnesses.

12. June Haver
June Haver was a sunny blonde actress that was said to be the next Betty Garble. The beauty was born on June 20, 1926, in Illinois. Haver was also dubbed as Hollywood’s sweetest star, and on some occasions, her friends even asked her to turn down the cheery attitude.

Haver started her career with four musicals shorts at Universal, one of which was called the Trumpet Serenade and involved the Tommy Dorsey orchestra. She later signed a contract with Fox, and she made her first appearance as a hat check girl in the musical The Gang’s All Here in 1943. After that, she got a role in the film Home in Indiana, where she starred with two other newcomers, Lon McCallister and Jeane Crain.

In 1945 she was cast by Fox in The Dolly Sisters in which she played Betty Grable’s younger sister. Later the beauty did a couple of fanciful biopics such as I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, Irish Eyes Are Smiling, You Beautiful Doll, and Look for the Silver Lining.

Haver has a rather brief career, and she didn’t get a chance to showcase her true talents. She dies on the 4th of July, 2005, at the age of 79.

13. Sophia Loren
After world war two, Italy was ravaged; Sophia Loren at that time was just 14 years old and was desperate for money to feed her sister and her mother. Wearing a dress made from window curtains, she entered a local beauty contest and was crowned Princess of the Sea; the prize was a ticket to Rome, some wallpaper, a table cloth with matching napkins, and about 35 dollars.

After that, she moved to Rome and found work as a movie extra and entered other beauty pageants, and then she met the producer that would change her life. That producer didn’t like her nose or even the fullness of her hips, even so, Carlo Ponti invited her for a screen test, and after that, her film career exploded. Just within a decade, she vowed Hollywood, winning an Oscar in 1961 for her performance in Two Women, this was the first Oscar awarded to a Foreign Actress and in a Foreign Film.

Loren stated that sex appeal is 50 percent what you got and 50 percent what people think you got. Her fans thought that she got 100 percent of what it takes to be a superstar and a sex symbol. The Italian Bombshell was born in 1934 and is still going strong at the age of 85.

14. Mara Corday
Mara Corday was an American singer, showgirl, and actress who was a pinup sensation in the 1950s. The beauty queen was born on January 3, 1930, in California. She became a part of the Hollywood industry at a very young age and found work as a showgirl at the East Carol Theatre. Her physical appeal helped to land a role as a showgirl in the movie Two Tickets to Broadway in 1951.

Corday signed a contract with Universal-International Pictures, and she was given roles in B grade television series and movies. She met her future husband Richard Long in 1954 at the set of her film, Playgirl.

In her early years, all her roles were small, and she starred opposite actors such as Leo G Carroll and John Agar. She later worked in a few Cling Eastwood films. The actress also worked in a few western films such as Taw Edge and Man without a Star.

Corday had more luck as a pinup model than an actress. She was featured in numerous men magazines and was also the Playmate of October in the 1958 issue of Playboy along with the popular model Pat Sheehan. When it came to television, she has a recurring role in the television series Combat Sergeant that ran on ABC.

15. Anita Ekberg
Anita Ekberg was a Swedish Actress who was considered a sex goddess because of her beautiful golden locks, luminous skin, and blue eyes. She rose to stardom when she played the role of Sylvia in the film La Dolce Vita in 1960.

Ekberg was born on September 29, 1931, in Malmo Skane. She was the sixth of seven children. She worked as a model in her teenage years and entered the Miss Malmo beauty contest in 1950. She won the beauty pageant and then went on to become Miss Sweden. In 1951 she went to the United States and competed in the Miss Universe competition. Unfortunately, the beauty did not win.

She later signed a contract with universal studios as a starlet and received lessons in dancing, elocution, drama, fencing, and horseback riding. She missed many of her drama lessons, and Universal dropped her in just six months.

Ekberg’s curvy figure and her well-publicized romances with Hollywood bigwigs such as Frank Sinatra, Rod Taylor, Tyrone Power, and Errol Flynn attracted gossip magazines such as Confidential, and so she became a prominent pin-up star of the 1950s and appeared in many men magazines like Playboy. She also took part in her fair share of publicity stunts. She later did many films and was even called Paramount’s Marilyn Monroe. The starlet later died at the age of 83 in 2015 after suffering through a complicated illness.

America’s entrance into World War II back in 1941 triggered the golden age of pinups, pictures of smiling women in a range of clothing-challenged situations. The racy photos adorned lonely servicemen’s lockers, the walls of barracks, and even the sides of planes. For the first time in its history, the US military unofficially sanctioned this kind of art: pinup pictures, magazines and calendars were shipped and distributed among the troops, often at government expense, in order to ‘raise morale’ and remind the young men what they were fighting for.

The heyday of the pinup was the 1940s and 50s, but pinup art is still around. To this day, pinup fans emulate the classic style in fashion, merchandise, photography, and even tattoos.

16. Betty Grable
The prize for the most popular piece of pinup art during WWII went to Betty Grable, who posed in a white bathing suit and high heels, looking over her shoulder. Betty’s studio, Twentieth Century Fox, provided five million copies of this iconic picture to distribute to troops. And her success outlasted the conflict: after the war, Grable became not only the top female box office draw, but the most highly paid woman in America, earning about $300,000 a year.

Betty’s legs, prominently featured in her famous photograph, were famously insured by her studio at a million dollars each – and that’s in 1940 dollars. Whether this was actually considered a wise investment, or was simply a publicity move by her studio, is still up for debate.

17. Bettie Page
Bettie Page rose to pinup fame only during the 1950s, later than the other models on this list. Although her entire modeling career lasted only seven years, she’s probably the most enduringly popular and recognizable pinup model today. Her distinctive bangs (a photographer thought them up to hide her high forehead) are still copied by young women. According to her fans, Page’s unique appeal lies in her natural smile and joyful appearance. Instead of pouting, she made sexiness seem fun.

After her retirement from modeling, her work lay forgotten for decades but resurged in the 1980s. Since then, public-domain images of Page have found their way onto merchandise, comics, and posters. A Seattle homeowner even painted a two-story version of Page on the side of his house she is cleverly covered up by the building’s eaves). Shortly after her death in 2008, Reason magazine called her pinup work “one of America’s most enduring brands.”

18. Vargas Girls
Probably the most popular pinup artist of the era, Alberto Vargas was already a successful magazine and poster artist when he signed a contract with Esquire magazine to produce monthly pinup art in 1940. He worked with Esquire for five years, during which time millions of magazines were sent free to World War II troops. Vargas received piles of fan mail from servicemen, often with requests to paint ‘mascot’ girls, which he is said to have never turned down.

Unlike Gil Elvgren’s pinup work, Vargas’ female figures were always shown on a featureless plain white background. While Vargas Girls were clothed for the most part, their very thinly-veiled eroticism made Vargas and Esquire magazine the target of censors later in the war.

19. Jane Russell
Russell was nicknamed the “sweater girl” after the garment that best emphasized her two most famous assets. In fact her debut film, The Outlaw, was almost pulled by censors who were concerned about the amount of cleavage she showed. Comedian Bob Hope once joked about how difficult it was to describe Jane Russell without moving your hands, a reference to her hourglass figure. Russell’s most famous set of pinup shots shows her lying relaxed in a pile of hay, holding a revolver.

Despite her detractors, Russell had a long and successful acting career, and was later best known for her part alongside Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

20. Zoe Mozert
One of only a few female pinup artists in a male-dominated field, Mozert had the advantage of being able to use herself as a model, something the male artists presumably never did. In fact, Mozert paid her way through art school in the 1920s by modeling, and would later often pose using a camera or a mirror to compose her paintings. As well as pinups, Mozert produced hundreds of novel covers, calendars, advertisements and movie posters during her career.

21. Veronica Lake
Outside of pinup shoots, Veronica Lake was also a popular film noir actress. She was born with the slightly less glamorous last name of ‘Ockelman’, but a smart producer changed it to ‘Lake’ to evoke her blue eyes. Lake was famous for her blonde, wavy ‘peekaboo’ hairstyle, the bangs of which covered her right eye. In the 1940s, women across America sacrificed half of their peripheral vision in order to imitate this hairstyle. Lake’s acting was praised by critics, but she gained a reputation for being difficult to work with, and her career didn’t last past the end of the decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_Lake

22. Elvgren Girls
Pinup drawings were not just limited to planes: many of the most popular pinups of the time were produced by commercial artists. ‘Elvgren girls’ was the nickname given to pinups drawn by artist Gil Elvgren. He began his focus on pinup art in 1937, but his long career also involved advertisements for Coca Cola and General Electric.

Elvgren was well-known for painting his pinup subjects in imaginative situations: water skiing, climbing trees, doing yard work, even skeet shooting. Many pictures featured a young woman in a situation that accidentally revealed her stocking tops and garters. Rather than overtly titilating imagery, Elvgren seemed to go more for personality and even humor.

23. Bomber Girls
As well as pinup photos, the US Army Air Force also unofficially permitted ‘nose art’, drawings of scantily-clad women on the fuselage of bombers and fighter planes, as a way of boosting pilot morale. Artists, often servicemen themselves, drew their inspiration from men’s magazines, popular actresses, and real-life models.

Unlike many pinups, bomber girls weren’t just about pictures of attractive women: the female figures were often regarded as mascots or lucky talismans that would ensure the plane’s safe return home. Sociologists have linked airplane nose art to the carved figureheads once found on the bows of ships, which superstitious sailors regarded as a type of good luck charm. The art form saw a resurgence in the US military during the first Gulf War, but was officially banned in 1992 after complaints from feminist groups.

24. Ava Gardner
Back in the 1940s, the studio system still ruled Hollywood, and actors and actresses were usually contracted exclusively to particular studios. Gardner was an ‘MGM girl’, discovered by the studio at age 18 after a photograph was spotted by talent scouts. A surprised Gardner quickly relocated to Hollywood.

Her early pinup work was typical for the time, involving shots of her on the beach or in bathing suits. Later in her career, Gardner became famous as a siren and a femme fatale, and switched to a less ‘innocent’ image, posing in heels and long black dresses. Gardner married Frank Sinatra in 1951 and although the marriage lasted only six years, she later said that he had been the love of her life.

25. Rita Hayworth
Rita Hayworth’s famous pose in a black negligee quickly made its way across the Atlantic in 1941, as troops brought the picture with them on the way to war. It ended up as the second most popular pinup picture in all of World War II. Hayworth, whose two brothers both fought in the conflict, didn’t just pose for pictures: she also was involved in selling war bonds, and appeared in USO shows.

Hayworth’s famous strawberry-blonde hair was actually an act: her real hair was jet black, but she dyed it red and even altered her hairline after she became concerned about being typecast in ‘Hispanic’ roles.

26. Mamie Van Doren
Mamie Van Doren (born Joan Lucille Olander; February 6, 1931) is an American actress, model, singer, and sex symbol who is known for being one of the first actresses to imitate the look of Marilyn Monroe. Van Doren is perhaps best remembered for the rock 'n' roll, juvenile delinquency exploitation movie Untamed Youth (1957), and other films of this calibre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamie_Van_Doren

27. Carolyn Jones
Carolyn Sue Jones (April 28, 1930 – August 3, 1983) was an American actress of television and film. Jones began her film career in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade had achieved recognition with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party (1957) and a Golden Globe Award as one of the most promising actresses of 1959. Her film career continued for another 20 years. In 1964, she began playing the role of Morticia Addams (as well as her sister Ophelia and the feminine counterpart of Thing, Lady Fingers), in the original black and white television series The Addams Family.

28. Ursula Andress
Ursula Andress (; born 19 March 1936) is a Swiss film and television actress, former model and sex symbol, who has appeared in American, British and Italian films. She is best known for her breakthrough role as Bond girl Honey Ryder in the first James Bond film, Dr. No. She later starred as Vesper Lynd in the James Bond parody Casino Royale. Her other films include The Southern Star, Fun in Acapulco, She, The 10th Victim, The Blue Max, Perfect Friday, The Sensuous Nurse, The Mountain of the Cannibal God, The Fifth Musketeer and Clash of the Titans. She also makes an appearance in the James Bond novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

29. Tempest Storm
Tempest Storm (born Annie Blanche Banks; February 29, 1928 – April 20, 2021), also dubbed "The Queen Of Exotic Dancers," was an American burlesque star and motion picture actress. Along with Lili St. Cyr, Sally Rand, and Blaze Starr, she was one of the best-known burlesque performers of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Her career as an exotic dancer spanned more than 60 years, and she was still performing in the early 21st century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_Storm

30. Betty Page
Bettie Mae Page (April 22, 1923 – December 11, 2008) was an American model who gained notoriety in the 1950s for her pin-up photos. She was often referred to as the "Queen of Pinups": her long jet-black hair, blue eyes, and trademark bangs have influenced artists for generations. After her death, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner called her "a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society".

A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Page lived in California in her early adult years before moving to New York City to pursue work as an actress. There, she found work as a pin-up model, and she posed for several photographers throughout the 1950s. Page was "Miss January 1955", one of the earliest Playmates of the Month for Playboy magazine. After years in obscurity, she experienced a resurgence of popularity in the 1980s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bettie_Page

In 1959, Page converted to evangelical Christianity and worked for Billy Graham, studying at Bible colleges in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, with the intent of becoming a missionary. The latter part of Page's life was marked by depression, violent mood swings, and several years in a state psychiatric hospital with paranoid schizophrenia.

Counterculture Movement Beginnings: The Overlooked Beat Movement Consumerism was at an all time high in the 1950s. World War II encouraged production of goods, provided an abundance of jobs, and motivated those on the home front to support their nation by spending. The economy finally felt relief for the first time since the booming age of the Roaring Twenties, before the Great Depression collapsed it all. People were focused on building families, working a steady job, and buying homes. Appliances, cars, and TVs were at the top of consumers’ list to modernize their homes. Additionally, consumer credit became a popular way for people to afford more things.

The counterculture movement rejected most things that were praised by the government. This included consumerism. The hippie-style clothing worn was often hand-me-downs bought at flea markets, yard sales, or second-hand shops. This was a purposeful effort to avoid buying from major brand-name stores and contributing to mainstream consumerist habits. Most of the counterculture movement youths were children of the middle and upper-middle class. They opposed everything that the previous decades were all about: wartime support, materialism, and work.

Not everyone involved in the counterculture movement was involved in the hippie movement. The two merged together because of matching perspectives. The hippie identity wasn’t actually accepted by hippies themselves at the time. Many preferred to be called a “freak” or “love child.” The term “hippie” was coined by local media outlets in San Francisco.

Hippie stuck as a derogatory identifier of rebellious youths participating in counterculture. It later manifested in a much lighter sense. It is generally no longer viewed as an insult to the modern-day hippie. Individuals who referred to people as hippies in the ‘60s and ‘70s were called “straights.” This phrase referred to anyone who didn’t support the counterculture movement. It described people who followed the traditional and “square” ways of life.

There were a few different types of hippies, including visionaries, freaks and heads, and plastic hippies. Although all youths who identified as love children were against much of the social and political norms of the times, many weren’t activists or protestors. Some groups fit the general description of a hippie but were more politically active and involved in protests. Examples of these groups included the “Diggers” and “Yippies.” Both groups emerged in the latter half of the ‘60s. Yippies stemmed from the Youth International Party. Diggers and Yippies were viewed as radical leftists who were anti-war socialism supporters with anarchist-like points of view.

Visionary hippies closely resembled the intellectual beatniks of the previous decades. They were the original hippies with anti-conventional values that rejected the ways of the generation before them. The freaks and heads were the hippies who sought freedom through spiritual connections using hallucinogenic drugs, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Plastic hippies took on the classic hippie fashion, dabbled in drug use, and enjoyed the atmosphere the hippie movement brought. They didn’t fully resonate with the actual roots of the movement and essentially just scratched the surface of what it meant to be a love child at the time.

Hippies were the baby boomer generation. There was a 14.5% population increase between 1940 and 1950. As a result, tens of millions of individuals came of age in the 1960s and ‘70s. This created a vast, rebellious generation that became the main focus for two decades. As with many youths coming of age, taking on rebelling perspectives and defying the common order wasn’t unheard of. However, the number of youths spread across the nation allowed the counterculture movement to expand exponentially.

The “American dream” was in full motion for many in the late 1940s and ‘50s. People felt a sense of patriotism. Many supported the first few years of US involvement in the Vietnam War to stop the spread of communism. This was especially apparent for those who lived through the first and second waves of Communist paranoia, known as the Red Scare. Counterculture activists were disappointed in the US government’s involvement in the Vietnam War.

The anti-war movement was a big part of counterculture. Just as Americans were experiencing relief from the Great Depression and the peace of post-WWII, the US entered the Vietnam War. More than two million American men were drafted. Some counterculturists took the opportunity to show their contempt for the war by burning their draft cards. Hippies who were especially against the war were known as “flower children” and advocated for peace and love. The peace sign, created by British artist Gerald Holtom, became an anti-war symbol and iconic representation of the counterculture hippie movement. It was originally designed as a logo for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958.

There were also other movements taking place within the counterculture movement. The Civil Rights Movement waged on from the mid-1950s to the late ‘60s. The Women’s Rights Movement emerged alongside counterculture. People were tired of oppression and discrimination. Youths were yearning for individuality, and many refused to carry on the bad habits of the generations that preceded them.

Perhaps one of the counterculture movement’s most significant impacts was its influence on pop culture. Fashion, music, and media were all affected. The iconic styles that emerged from the counterculture movement were bright, flamboyant, and less conventional. Comfortability and individuality conquered over conservative wear. Twiggy, Cher, and Janis Joplin are just a few women who influenced the fashion scene of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Bold colors, patterns, and the free-spirited bohemian aesthetic were in full swing. Part of men’s fashion was heavily influenced by the rock ‘n roll scene that bloomed in the late 1950s. Long hair, bell-bottoms, and vibrant patterns were common among male youths.

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