Gloria's Oversexed Mind

Going AWOL with military humor

Happy holiday everyone! I'm taking a week off from live-blogging next week. Instead I'm going to run some of the beautiful old art shows that used to appear here on Fridays. See you on Tuesday with a full week of spectacular work by some of history's finest erotic artists.

Every little bit helped the soldiers

WWII drive to conserve American steel for military needs.

Full-bodied flag-waving

Soldiers' forget-me-nots

Women of War: WACs and Molly Pitcher

Two vintage postcards honoring Molly Pitcher (aka Mary Hays):

A thousand boys in blue

Men of War: equality for ALL

Original photo, Korean War era, proudly showing our first integrated forces. Thank you, Harry Truman for finally recognizing that ALL Americans are EQUAL.

Gone but never forgotten

Cheering the soldiers on

WWII Soldier's "Little Black Book"

Soldiers! Uncle Sammy and your entire American family thank you

Memorialize This

1907 postcard

In honor of America's fighting forces, and all the men and women who have put themselves in harm's way to serve our country, I'm running some fun red white and blue things today and shutting the blog for tomorrow (Monday). Happy holiday, everyone.

Think of me this weekend, exerting mind over matter

A woman who men seldom understand.

Victorian quackery: peculiar medicines, force feeding, and all your problems cured

Wow. Did the stocks come with the vinegar or did those cost extra?

Another example of Victorian frivolity and the craving for entertainments, this features an optical puzzle on the front, with answers and hilarious hype for quack literature and remedies on the back.

Feminine Underthings: is you is Lovable? or is you ain't Scandale?

in case you missed the top margin art:

Boot me up, loverboy: Victorian men's footwear

Here's a boot that could intoxicate a bottom.

Victorian advertising art at its finest and most curiously meticulous, the front of this trade card for "cable screw" boots tells a story, poses a riddle, and offers a freebie. The reverse offers a mini-play. To poor boys who hungered for entertainments of any kind, a card like this must have been sheer delight.

Vintage ads: bras, girdles, and jungle girls

Men's Underwear: shorts, support, and room for your balls

Women in Lingerie: abdomen sag and man trap

George Petty's advertising art: girdles and swimsuits

George Petty's advertising art: calendar girls and hunks in trunks

Two part show of advertising ephemera, featuring the work of one of America's most prolific pin-up artists, George Petty (1894 - 1975).

Victorian corsets: steel stays and Wildean aesthetics

Just like today, some advertisers knew that throwing in a cute pet makes potential customers pay more attention.

   

The dandy below is one of my most favorite writers in the world, Oscar Wilde, and his caricature (and the reference to an "aesthetic craze") are likely based on his infamous 1882 trip to the US and Canada.

Victorian corsets: cork and self-adjusting

  

  

Victorian corsets: skating and glove-fitting

Trade cards were a common marketing tool of the advertising and sales trades from the 1880s to the early 1900s. Lavishly illustrated on one side, and usually with advertising hype on the reverse, they were distributed by merchants to pedestrians who walked passed their shops and salesmen who carried products door to door.

To see more of these miniature art works, I recommend The Trade Card Place and Miami U's Digital Library: Victorian Trade Card Collection

   

   

A monstrously fun day of ads

Yes, time again for tantalizing treasures from my latest sojourns through the tacky, tawdry, culturally revealing world of advertising. Today's shows will be a fetishist's delight, beginning with curious Victorian advertisements for corsets, pin-up ad art by George Perry, and lingerie, girdles, underwear ads and even some gloriously odd ads for wacky quack cures.

Meanwhile, gee, it kills me that these went out of style...

Bloody heaps of horror (vintage posters)

Screaming teeth and the edge of the seat

Women Who Cause Trouble (in horror movies)

Troubled Men (in horror movies)

Mexican horrors: vintage lobby cards