Eyeful

If you're not already aware of Taschen books then I can't recommend their Icons series highly enough. Fascinating collections that curate art, architecture, pop culture, music, photography, literature - essentially, all the touchstones I've been exploring in this blog during the last thirteen years. And then some.

A couple of weeks ago the perennial hot potato regarding the is it porn/is it burlesque? question came up. Now I don't really know where glamour ends and pornography begins, all I do know is that there are some classic saucy forays into the world of pin-ups covered in the book I'm holding above. I've captured a couple of snapshots from it below; obviously they come from a far more innocent time i.e. the 1950s - the end of World War 2 was closer than it was to the start of feminism and magazine publishers could see there was mileage in young women shedding some of their outer garments and asking them to pose suggestively. I'll leave it at that. (I wouldn't want Mary Whitehouse types pillorying either me or the blog and I certainly don't want to mansplain any of my editorial choices!) However, I think it was Adam who wanted me to run with a regular burlesque feature, so you can blame him for this!