The pin-up as an icon of visual culture in the mid-twentieth century is one that derives from traditions rooted in the nineteenth century Burlesque “leg show,” a derivative of the legitimate theatre which emphasised the erotic nature of the performance of an actress on stage for a primarily male audience, in conjunction with established forms cheaply produced photography, principally utilizing the carte-de-visite, or “calling card” in which the stage persona of an actress or young starlet could be constructed, controlled and promoted. This history of the eroticized female nude, one typically understood as politically dominated by the male gaze, is re-examined in this exhibition through a feminist lens that demonstrates the degree of agency actually employed by the young women having themselves portrayed in a more sexualized nature than was commonly deemed acceptable within the context of puritanical Victorian morality. The sexualized woman is indeed a self-aware and independent figure, as she subverts the traditional roles of women in the public sphere and overturns expectations of women in the social realm. Terms describing the “New Woman” enter popular vocabulary before 1894, as a means to describe this rebellious spirit of womanhood being explored by middle and working class women who would become increasingly engaged in modern public spaces. In relation to this discussion of London, Ontario’s hosiery mills, traditions of “covering up” the female body and the objects used to do so, such as a silk stocking, are imbued with these same fetishistic connotations when placed in the public sphere of advertising and commercial visual culture. Though the intended audience has shifted in this case to interpellate the female viewer, advertisements selling hosiery to women essentially propose the same principles of desire and the fulfillment of fantasy that also drove pin-up photography, and earlier the theatrics of the Burlesque.
Kimberly Barton
Kimberly Barton