That strange pursed lips face is even better than the exaggerated 'o' face shmexy models make now. Let's totally go back to that.

I don't know as if I call these photoshop forerunners. The before pictures are nothing more then the referance photos that the artists were using to make sure they got their figures right. Many artists use a wide variety of refernaces because quite frankly sometimes your own eyes and memory just aren't good enough to not mess things up. While it is very interesting to see the referance photos we need to remember that, that is all they were. These are fantasy paintings where the artist had a helping hand.

Curious, indeed. Do you know if there are examples of men being photoshopped? I imagine the men used in 1950s advertising were touched up somewhat, perhaps to broaden their shoulders, square their jaws, etc. to make them look more masculine.

It's a bit disingenuous to suggest that these are similar to photoshop. What you have to understand in looking at these is the fact that the pinup was the desired end-product and always was going to be - the photographs on the left are simply reference pictures to help the artist accomplish what they originally had in mind. To suggest the artist was beginning with the photos is as fundamentally wrong as to suggest that Disney "photoshopped" its old live references into becoming Cindarella.

I'm unfortunately with the others who say that illustration != photoshopping a photograph. A reference photo is for a pose, anatomy, and lighting. Things ALWAYS have to change in illustration, or the pose will look flat. In addition to that, artist have to change things to avoid awkward tangents and tweak anatomy, lighting, etc, to create a strong composition and manipulate how the viewer's eye will flow along the finished piece. The reference has very little bearing on the end image sometimes... Pixar animators will hop around in front of cameras so they have video footage of the acting they're aiming for. It doesn't matter at all that they're transforming a middle-aged male animator into a mouse, or a car, or an old woman.

I'm not saying there's zero objectification at work here, but I mean, they're pin-ups. It's practically pornography, so of course they are idealized.

I actually had the opposite reaction looking at these. The women presented in the illustrations actually have FAT on them! Look at her legs! Look how they left the skin being pushed by the bras! Look at the soft, not-perfectly-horrifyingly-spherical breasts! Look how nobody is drenched in oil! All things considered, these are a vast improvement on comparable illustrations made today.

Looks like the 'duck face' has been around for 60 years.

As an artist, and a feminist... I do feel it's problematic that the general trend here seems to be for slimming the models' figures, and inflating their chests. But other than that the comparison isn't really very apt.

A good illustrator does not paint exactly what they see. Illustration is a form of communication, and it's an illustrator's job to change and exaggerate what they see to become what they want to convey. A reference shot isn't at all the same thing as a base image for photo manipulation.

The point was not to reproduce these photos perfectly, the photos were just help in reaching the endpoint of what the illustrator meant to convey. For example, here's a blog of artists posing for their own reference shots.
A lot of these folks are cartoonists and fantasy illustrators, so obviously the end product isn't going to look at all like that. They just need to know how arms flexed in a certain way look, or faces, etc.

On a related note, I find Googling images of Duane Bryers' popular pin up character Hilda to be refreshing after these.

Fantasy sure as hell beats reality

It's definitely interesting, but I wouldn't call it the same as photoshop. Live models were being used as reference to illustrated characters (Disney used the same techniques to make human/humanoid character's movements and facial expressions realistic in their animated films). We pretty much know that drawings and paintings aren't exact depictions of the people posing; while the pictures are definitely idealized, it's also pretty obvious the picture isn't supposed to be a literal depiction of the model. The facial features are different, the backgrounds are different the clothes are different, even the poses are slightly different. While the models are posing as inspiration for the pictures, the pictures are not OF the models. In photography, it's different; a photograph of someone is supposed to depict them as they were in that moment. Which is also why people don't really care much if a woman being photographed ups on makeup, sucks her stomach in, or wears a push-up bra to look more "ideal," but seeing photoshopped pictures in comparison to the real thing is jarring, bothersome, and even in some cases, flat-out disturbing (take a gander at the photos that young girls in beauty pageants have done....Uncanny Valley much?).

What do feminists think of pinup models in general? I see a lot of girls trying to emulate that '50s style today and I'm curious about it. It seems like it objectifies women but maybe there is something I'm missing?

Gil Elvgren is the artist. These pin ups date between 1952-1965. I can find the exact dates and names of these pin ups if anyone is interested.
Best Regards.

It is obvious to me that this is not the same as Photoshopping (as many people have already said) because illustrations stylize their subjects. Depending on the intention of the illustration, the stylization might be different - for instance, we all agree that children's cartoon characters shouldn't be sexualized in the ways that these pinups have been sexualized - but that doesn't mean the human body should never be stylized, and never stylized in a sexual way. Personally, I think a conversation about the social coding of different methods of stylization would be a much better approach to this particular set of pictures.

Gil Elvgren was a commercial artist who creating images to meet the needs of a client. I found an image commissioned by a different client (Coca-Cola) that was created in 1945 that features a depiction of a woman in a pose that in my opinion is less blatantly sexually objectified. It seems clear from the woman's features that he had also used his wife as the model for this image.
See:
http://www.digitaldeliftp.com/Images/pings/1945ArtbyGilElvgren.png

The forerunner to Photoshop was post-exposure photo manipulation, which is as old a craft as photography itself. There has never been a momentwhen commercial or art photography was a record of objective reality; Photoshop is just a faster, easier digitized version of what we used to do by hand in the darkroom. One common tool for that was the airbrush, hence "airbrushing." Even journalistic photos are typically retouched, although we expect that the anatomical proportions won't have been changed in those.

As for the content of these images, what really strikes me about them is not so much the way the body is "idealized" (as bodies in art have been for thousands of years) but rather how active and expressive these characters are. The sexual ideal being depicted was not a cipher staring blankly into space with lips parted, but rather several shades of playful, mischievous, and ecccentric, and they were actually moving around and doing stuff! They got to look like something was going on in their heads! It's quite refreshing, at least if you can look past the notion that there's something inherently wrong with rare body types being idealized.

I'm going to agree with the people saying that a direct analogue to photoshop is inappropriate and that painted, stylized figures can't compare to photoshopping for the amount of subconscious damage they can do but it's also interesting to study the 'rules' that vintage art had for 'idealizing' women.

Here's a good example, taken from the Famous Artists Cartooning Course, Lesson 7: how to draw pretty girls.

http://htmlimg1.scribdassets.com/g9ngw7i4bz37xc0/images/4-fa2cd7c72c/000.jpg

There are some definite similarities to what photoshoppers tend to do, slimming out the contours of the back and stomach, removing all the bony landmarks, etc. It's also similar that they prescribe one dominant set of rules. The artist isn't encouraged to enhance or diminish things based on what he finds most attractive, but by what has been accepted as THE universal standard.

What's different is they encourage the artist to make the breasts smaller.

If anyone is interested, the full lesson is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/24956326/Famous-artists-cartoon-Course-Lesson-7-Pretty-Girls

The text is extremely sexist in tone, which is interesting in and of itself.

I think the comparison to photo shop is a good one. When you see the amount of change in a post-photo shop photo when compared to the original, you almost wonder why they bothered to photograph a live person at all. They change so much about the model´s body that it´s like an entirely different and unreal person. As if it were a painting almost. So, the idea that they make paintings based on photos...and now they make photo shop images based on photos. Based on photos of real people, but with the end product being no more like a real person than these paintings are like real women. They are a likeness of real women, but in reality they never existed.

I notice you didn't mention that the legs became longer.

Feet become smaller, too

Is it just my imagination, did they make the women look almost child like (with the obvious exception of having breasts).  Or perhaps younger than the models.