Calendar Girl, Cheescake, Pin-up Girl, Centerfold, Glamour Girl. All names for more or less the same thing. Paper dolls in vibrant color good for a month. Now frowned upon...but frowned upon back then too, note the strategic banners. This is a group of four pages from a Salesman Sample for calendars, circa 1955, which were censored in bold manner, nothing subtle about it. It must have been frustrating for printers to keep getting hauled into court in every city the local mailman happened to peek into the bulk mail. As any man my age will attest, every single gas station had a similar calendar hanging in the grease shop. They always hung askew in the same place. It was an annual ritual for the boss to open one up in January and start a new year. It allowed a few minutes of supervisor/subordinate bonding before another year of oil changes began. It is odd that breasts are so often (even to this day) censored, especially as they are nearly always the first pleasant encounter of every mammal, including both sexes of the two-legged kind. The entire convoluted history of 20th century commercial titillation and censorship is a topic I hope to wrestle with in future posts, but for the time being I am content just to "hang these on the wall" so to speak.
Four Lithograph printed Salesman Sample Calendar Pages c. 1955 Collection Jim Linderman
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