Happy Halloween!

Yours truly is out having a fabulous time on a Halloween-themed vacay.  But here are some gorgeous vintage Halloween postcards.  Someday I am going to get around to making something out of these, but in the mean time I hope you enjoy them!

Halloween Pin-Ups

It is getting close to Halloween, my absolute favorite holiday.  Here are a few vintage Halloween pin-up girls. 

 

Betty Grable, 1940s

I can't find her name, but she is adorable. 

This is Paulette Goddard.  She was Miss Halloween, 1939.

Dead Sexy

Gimme a W!  Gimme a T!  Gimme an F!  

Lidner is a Polish coffin company.  This is the cover of their 2012 calendar.  This is the third year that they have published a sexy lady calendar to help sell their wares.   I know when I think about being dead, and having my lifeless corpse lowered into the ground, I definitely think about naked ladies with boob jobs.  So, yeah, whatever.

You might have noticed that the image above merely shows a naked lady.  There is no degradation or violence.  So, technically speaking, it's not pornographic.  Don't worry though, Lidner ups the ante with some of the images on the inside of the calendar.

Sexualization of violence against women?  Check!

Good job with that advertising campaign!   I think somebody deserves a raise!

Skanky Barbie? Oh, I'll give you Skanky Barbie.

 

This is tokidoki Barbie.  She is quite the controversial little doll these days.  All the blogs and news shows are talking about her.  Honestly, I don't get it. Yeah, she has some tattoos.  Do I want my five year old to have tattoos?  Nope.  I gotta say I'm not too worried that she is going to take off on her big wheel and get tatted up.  I am a lot more worried that she'll decide that she needs big boobs, a tiny waist and foot-killing-stilettos of death to be okay.  

This morning I heard the radio show host Bill Bennett call her Skanky Barbie.  Seriously, "Dr." Bill?  Skanky implies not only low-class but also sluttiness.   Is she a whore because she has tattoos?  Or is it the pink hair?  I'm confused, because a lot of Barbies get sold every year that look like outright prostitutes, and there are no news stories about them.  Check out this Barbie that I bought at Toys 'R Us for my psych of women course.

My scene Barbie?  What exactly is your scene?  Street corners and stripper poles?

So, lay the hell off of tokidoki Barbie because of the tattoos.  At least she's fully dressed.  Let's focus on the bigger problems with Barbie.   

P.S.
Love the pink hair, bitch!

It's Halloween! Is your daughter going to be a princess or a stripper?

Halloween season is definitely in full swing!  I am trying to figure out how in the hell to make my son the Shark Boy costume he wants to wear (apparently nobody sells Shark Boy costumes), and am shopping for just the right princess dress for my daughter.  My daughter, a princess?  Yep.  Isn't that a bit gender stereotyped?  Yep.  Every year since she's been able to pick, she's chosen a princess gown.  She's been a snow princess, a purple princess, and last year I made a drag-queen worthy silver princess dress out of an old silk nightgown and a whole lot of rhinestones.  

So, while I am letting my kid dress up like a princess, apparently a lot of other moms are letting their kids dress up in mini-versions of adult hoochie-mama Halloween costumes. 

I'm not sure who Lagoona Blue is, but based on the photo below I'm guessing she is a workin' lady.  Check on the hooker shoes on this girl:

Surely I am not the only one who thinks that it is not cool to let little kids play sexy dress-up for Halloween?  

A Little Hilda for Your Monday

So it's Monday.  We've got that going for us, right?  Here's a little Hilda to get your week off to a good start.

Plumbing can be fun?  Really?

Oh, Japan!

So apparently in Japan, women spend money to have cosmetic dental procedures to have their teeth look like this:

In Japan, this crooked, exaggerated canine look is called yaeba, and it's considered cute and desirable.   In the US, we call that a jacked up grill, and we spend lots of money so that our teeth don't look like that.   Apparently, this particular pattern of crooked teeth is somewhat common in Japan, and the Japanese have decided to embrace it instead of striving for perfectly straight teeth like we do in the States.  That's actually rather nice, although it sucks that women with straight teeth are having false yaeba applied.  It's just further proof that beauty standards are arbitrary as hell.

Let's just hope that the Brits don't do something similar.  

Black Pin-Up Girls

So, I recently posted about chubby pin-up girls, and even pin-up boys.  I realized that I have never seen a Black pin-up girl.  Surely they exist, right?  Turns out, not so much.   I have spent more time that I want to admit over the last few days trying to dig up some beautiful pin-up art.  I am left empty-handed and kind of pissed off.  Surely someone has a box of old 1940s pin-ups sitting in an attic or closet waiting to be rediscovered.  I refuse to believe that this is such a crazy concept that it was never done.

Despite failing to find pin-ups, I did find some very lovely photographs of Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, and Joyce Bryant.  

Dorothy Dandridge

Joyce Bryant

Josephine Baker

Although these photos are beautiful, it strikes me as odd that I can't find any vintage pin-ups or more recent pin-ups that are done by an actual artist.    What gives, internet?  

Dinner at the Crackington House

I found this picture in an ad I got in the mail from a local grocery store today.    Have you ever seen a more cracktastic spread? 

Billy:  "Hey Mom, what's for dinner?"

Mom:  "Pepperoni pizza, orange juice, a basket of whole-wheat bread, some cocktail shrimp and a big bowl of raw hot peppers."

Billy: "Cool, I like pizza. Wait, what?  A bowl full of raw..."

Mom:  "Yeah!  A bowl full of hot peppers.  Is there a problem with that?  Do I look like Paula-fucking-Dean to you?" 

Billy:  "Uhhh...  DAAAD!  I think Mom stopped taking her medication again!"

Mom:  "Your father?  You're calling him to help? Ha!  Oh, you are just like him.  So judgemental.  Nothing is ever enough.  I even spent the whole damn afternoon rolling up lunch meat JUST LIKE YOU LIKE IT  Oh, and I threw on some olives.  OLIVES, dammit.  And DIP!  Creamy-orange dip, because MOMMY LOVES YOU."

Toilet Tissue Couture

Have you ever been to a bridal shower and played that awful game where you make a bridal dress out of a roll of toilet paper?  No?  Wow, you must run with a classier group of friends.  Anyway, White Cashmere is a Canadian toilet paper company that sponsored some kind of contest for designers to make gowns completely out of their toilet paper. Proceeds from the fashion show benefited the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. 

These are made entirely from toilet paper.  I'm going to assume that they had access to bigger sheets of it than what you get on a standard roll, but I am still amazed.  

 

Apparently this is made of hundreds of little rosettes of toilet paper. 

Aren't you proud of me?  The combination of Canadians and toilet paper could have made for all sorts of smart-assery on my part, but I resisted. 

Sexy, sexy breast cancer?

I came across this ad in the latest issue of the Oprah Magazine.  It's by Estée Lauder.  I don't have a problem with the toplessness.  Ain't nothing wrong with breasts.  The problem is the way that this is photographed and posed.  It's a great example of objectification.  The women are just breasts and lips, eyes cropped out, anonymous.  There is also the implied sexuality that I would definitely label as faux lesbianism.

It almost looks like somebody ran out of time and had to really quickly photoshop the cover for a high-budget porn into a breast cancer ad. 

Plus, I gotta tell you that I'm not lovin' the lipstick.  Yeah, I know it's breast-cancer-awareness pink, but it's not working for all of those ladies.

The breast cancer awareness ads below also use topless women, but manage to come off entirely different.  Less creepy, less generic.

This is from the Look After Your Boobies campaign.

 

This is also by Estée Lauder.  It's not only more tasteful, but makes a bigger impact.

This also crops the woman's face out, reducing her to body parts.  Yet the message is entirely different. 

Queen of the Pin-Ups

Have you ever heard of Hilda?  She was a pin-up girl painted by Duane Bryers between 1957 and 1970.  She has been experiencing a bit of a revival lately.  There is something so joyful and free about her.  And as an unexpected bonus, she is a bit of a big girl and a ginger, too!  How can you not love her?  Here are a few of my favorites, but there are dozens more. 

This one reminds me of a racy Anne of Green Gables.  Remember when she walked across the roof and fell?

Don't they make you smile?