Erotic Postcards

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The development of the picture postcard got off to a slow start, but the time it took for this initial dawdling was well spent: when social freedom was a fact, the picture postcard was ready. If this freedom or the sudden popularity of the picture postcard had been a long time ago, this coincidence would have been much less effective and sparkling than it was now. We often hear that we are living in a corrupting, visually saturated, consumer culture, which threatens the innocence of girlhood. But representations of young girls in the European postcard trade at the turn of the 20th century cast doubt on this notion of an ideal, more innocent past. The Internet begat LiveJasmin and Chaturbate. The printing press begat Fanny Hill and Fifty Shades. The camera begat Playboy and dirty postcards.

Towards the end of the 19th century two things happened at the same time, triggering the development of the erotic picture postcard: the social climate changed so that what had previously been considered obscene was now just naughty, and the postcard suddenly had its golden heyday. Inundated with Millions In another unattributed French postcard (before 1904), we follow the adventures of Lili who is described as “playing around”. The caption informs us that she has a springtime smile, and that she is ready to wear her bedside wreath. Her white apparel and the laced clothing convey the idea of virginal innocence and freshness. The demise of the saucy postcard occurred during the 1970s and 1980s; the quality of the artwork and humor started to deteriorate with changing attitudes towards the cards content. Three eggs hide the sitter’s bosom. They allude to the symbol of fertility, while playing with the visual resemblance between the shape of breasts and eggs. A deftly positioned piece of cloth emphasises her hips thereby defining an inviting triangle. This veil of modesty also denotes the art of teasing in a game of hide and seek.As a result, the identities of French postcard models -- as well those of the people who took them -- remain unknown to this day. A similar change in fashion had, of course, taken place during the Napoleonic Wars, although the changes then had not been illustrated nearly as amusingly by La Belle Assemblée as they are now by the picture postcards. The lady with the hourglass shape could hide her ankles as much as she wanted with a frilly foam layer of long skirts, but at night she exposed her raised breasts almost to the nipples. The early Edwardian hourglass model was an anachronism well before the war, but the limitation of its strapped up waist had been replaced by the perhaps more severe limitation of the narrow hobble skirt; the war, however, freed the legs and bodies of the women, free to move in the world on the same wider scale as when they had had to do the work of the men. Napoleonic Wars

The first world war sounded the death knell of the postcards age. During the conflict, propaganda postcards had helped feed the nationalistic fervour but overall, demand for postcards plunged. The attraction of youthful femininity though, did not wane. Another medium offered more exciting prospects and creative potential than serialized postcards: the cinema. The erotic cards can range from the mere risqué to explicit pornography (Fig.1 and 2). Most of these were created as real photo cards, especially when dealing with full nudity. Though produced in postcard formats most of these cards were not meant to be mailed for they were often confiscated by postal authorities. Destroyed This new eroticised visual culture drew the attention of legislators, philanthropic organisations, and religious groups. Concerns of child protection reformers ranged from the growing recognition of the child as a vulnerable being in need of protection to a more general fear of moral corruption.

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In both postcards, the sitters epitomise the photographers’ quest for both pristine morality and brazen sexuality. The ambivalent girl exemplifies what scholar Hanne Blank names, the “erotic virgin”. By the turn of the next decade, motions to censor and govern public morality had failed. The year 1933 saw Prohibition repealed, and as the '30s wore on erotic photography became more visible and popular. Perhaps early 20th-century composer Cole Porter said it best in the song "Anything Goes:" The dating of erotic cards - the further we get into the twentieth century, the more postmarks there are - are of particular importance, because they form a nuanced commentary on both the rapidly loosening and cheerful attitude towards sexuality and the exceptional way in which the World War I changed the fashionable image of the sexually-attractive woman. Strapped Up Waist It’s difficult to know how many prostitutes worked in London during the Victorian era. Estimates vary from 20,000 (probably) to 80,000 (unlikely). The doctor and writer William Acton (1813–1875), who is perhaps best-known for his books on masturbation or “ self-pollution“, estimated there were 210,000 prostitutes working in London during the 1850s. Acton based his figure on the 42,000 illegitimate births in London in 1851. He also once claimed to have counted 185 prostitutes on a walk from his surgery to his home. One suspects he considered every woman he passed as a prostitute. The artist tainted the model’s lips with a vivid red, a similar hue to the plinth’s velvet. The colour conveys a brazen sexuality immediately contradicted by the candour of the model. What strikes one’s attention is precisely the discrepancy between these sexual innuendos and the sitter’s youthful naivety. She proudly smiles, unaware of the paedophilic gaze she may entice in the adult viewer. The end result is deeply unsettling and exploitative.