Here’s an interesting history of pinups in advertising! Showing pictures of billboards from the 1800s-1950s, with a focus on pretty girls in beer advertisements.
The next page shows samples of pretty women used to advertise books and, the latest thing, record album covers. Even classical music “moves off the shelves” faster when an attractive woman is pictured on it!
Here is an interesting history of tobacco advertisements using pretty women and pinups as bait, and to gain broader social acceptance of smoking cigarettes! To explain changes in tobacco advertising, you have to take a historical perspective, which this article explains best. Briefly the history of tobacco ads (according to this 1953 article):
Here is illustrated how two marketing companies used cheesecake pinup, double entendre, and sexual innuendo to sell mens shirts and bed sheets.
Enjoy these pinup pictures of Marilyn Monroe, declared “The All American Pinup” by the 1953 issue of Cheesecake – An American Phenomenon. Jane Russell said that “Marilyn is the most female girl I know”, and her only flaws were “a slight thickness behind the knees”.
The next page declares that “American business will spend close to $1,000,000,000 in advertising alone. At least one out of every three advertisements will feature a girl, who is bound to be pretty, shapely, and appealing.
