2000s – History of Pin-up

Technology! Y2K, the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, the iPhone, and space launches. These are all defining elements as we enter the 2000s.  We have now entered the digital age. Just like magazine, movies, and TV shows all helped shape our cultural ideals, the internet shaped this decade.

2000s Pin-Up Girl by Chris Wooley

Clean modern lines, vibrant colors, tattoos and piercings all help define the pin-up girl of the 2000s. Photo by Chris Wooley

No longer are we limited to what media producers find to be acceptable. The internet served as a gateway into what the public wanted. Anyone could take a photo and post it online for the world to see. And many people did.  You could find just about any particular subject you were interested in – from Pez collectiable items to classic literature. It was a place to share and learn.

And you guessed what happened next. Porn! The stigma associated with finding and watching porn quickly dissolved as you could now download, view, and share naughty images online.  Perhaps the greatest challenge was the download speeds of the early 2000s. It took forever to download a single pixelated image – and even longer for a video clip.

From this, though, we see how the wants and desires of the popular masses helped shape what we see.  In the 1990s, tattoos and body piercings were becoming more mainstream.  But in the 2000s, we can see the development of these modifications in our poster women of choices.  No longer were they hid behind the cultural morals of big media.

And as we’ve seen repeatedly, as the new technology pushes us outside of our comfort zone, the need to push the envelope continues to grow. We get more and more daring in what we consider sexy, appropriate, and beautiful.

 

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