Sword-Swallowing!

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what a half-naked, buff sword-swallowing woman has to do with refrigerators, but this ad is from the Saturday Evening Post in 1921. Awesome!

Comments

[keristars.livejournal.com]

Is it just me or are her thighs unnaturally long?

[willowind76.livejournal.com]

I didn't even notice, I was to busy looking at her weird boobs. :/

[keristars.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw the boobs but they were so obviously weird that I just skipped right over them as being a stylistic choice, or possibly some weird effect of musculature and fat that comes with being an Amazonian sword swallower (or from being a fetishized idea of what an Amazonian sword swallower must look like).

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's something odd happening there. There should be more continuation along the line of her pectorals, considering that pose, IMO.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

My thighs are about the same as hers, I think.

[keristars.livejournal.com]

Really? The proportions just seem really off to me. Even looking at it more closely, it isn't so much that the thighs are particularly long, but that the length between hips and crotch is really long. Follow the lines of the underside of the thighs to see where they meet (and consider the pose and how it won't be a sharp angle), and look how disproportionate it seems.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Here's me in a similar pose...



It doesn't look unreasonable to me. But I can't swallow swords.

Yay! Fun with cameras....

[keristars.livejournal.com]

Nicely done! Also, I am envious of your bookcases.

Also, the proportions of your hip-thigh in the same post is MUCH smaller than in the drawing. I honestly do think it's a weird error of the artist's, much like the odd boobs.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Could be!

I think the boobs are maybe part of the art style. I've seen similar unrealistically round boobs in other paintings around the turn of the 20th century, but I'll be darned if I can remember the artists/paintings in question. This is going to plague me until I can remember. I took a quick peek through one of my art books, but no luck, and searching online gives me almost nothing but porn. Bah.

I love my bookcases, too. :)

[retooned.livejournal.com]

Photoreference for the win! (Thank you.)

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! :D

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's her thighs. You can see her right hip bone under the skirt, and the thigh extending from there seem normal. I think it might be that either she has no belly button, or else it's hidden under that tassel and she has a REALLY long abdomen.

[owl-eyes-4ever.livejournal.com]

So when did boobies become taboo in the public?

[keristars.livejournal.com]

It was never really taboo if they belonged to Exotic People. :/

[roeskva]

No idea, relatively recently, I think? Movies from the seventies seem to be much more cool with it.
However, I think it is mostly a US thing? At least I was kind of shocked to discover what was censored in movies and such when I lived in the US (I'm from Denmark, and currently living in Sweden).
We have advertisements which has topless women, and no one seems to care even if they are put up on the main street. Full-frontal nudity (male and female) is also often shown in movies, and that alone will not give a movie a higher rating or be considered child-unsafe.
Well, according to statistics, 50% of Danes sleep naked, so I gather the kids is used to seeing it ;)

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

In Japan, it's an ordinary thing to see full frontal nudity on TV. No biggie—and again, in Japan that's also true.

[crabofdoom.livejournal.com]

Oh, Denmark. Why must everything I hear about your people make you sound all the cooler?

[jtaylor2.livejournal.com]

wth?

humm

[wldrose.livejournal.com]

what month is that from? because I say its photoshoped no way its from SEP in 21

ash

Re: humm

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I just found another reference to it online that says it's from 1931.

http://cgi.ebay.com/1931-Electrolux-gas-refrigerator-sword-swallowing-AD-/200454896019?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0

Re: humm

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I can't quite read the year, but the month is July in the graphic there.

Re: humm

[wldrose.livejournal.com]

i saw that and think its a fake also ill check my local back issues just because it seems so odd to me (the breasts seem so odd as do some other things)

by the way great pose in your response further down that position can burn so much i have found.

Re: humm

[keristars.livejournal.com]

I thought for a minute that eBay wasn't allowing me to see it because of the boobs (or maybe the sword swallowing?!), then I realized I just installed NoScript, and probably it's because of that. Still, it gave me a moment of lol :D

[retooned.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that the US culture got slightly wild after World War 1, and even more so wild when we started to bottom-out in the Great Depression (even with the crash in the Fall of 1929, that bottoming-out of Bat Times was around 1931-32.) Community standards were challenged. The movies were pretty wild about this time, and what was shown in the movies (and the reaction of the conservative parts of the community) were the reasons the movie self-censorship boards were set up.

And as keristars said up above "It was never really taboo if they belonged to Exotic People. :/" -- So even in the teens and 20s, middle class families would be subscribing to National Geographic magazine, and it was a standard joke about the articles with photographs that would include women in non-Western costume. So having the model costumed as an exotic was closer to making it OK.

The Saturday Evening Post was a very major mainstream publication - Popular fiction and articles, very well illustrated. I'm sure publishing an ad (for a refrigerator!) with an illustration like this was a calculated risk. It would get a LOT of attention! And there would have been socially conservative parents writing letters of protest... and there would have been a page torn out of the magazine (by concerned parties, who may or may not have saved it). 8)