While shopping for retro clothes, it’s easy to find the words “pin-up” plastered across a website. However, as a person that would rather dress how people actually used to dress than how highly-sexualized figures dressed, it’s a bit frustrating to find clothes. A lot of pin-up-model-inspired clothes are tight and revealing; what women actually wore in the forties and fifties was tight at the waist, fitted above the waist, loose below, and very conservative.

Being able to find pin-up clothes easier than real-life retro clothes infuriates me for numerous reasons. Not very many women were pin-up models, just like not very many women are models today. Since a lot of websites are advertising these revealing clothes as retro, people start to associate immodest behaviors and clothing with a very modest society. Also, it’s very hard to find things to wear that accurately represent the time period(s) a person may like.

For the many people who have ever thought pin-up girls like Bettie Page and Jayne Mansfield modeled what the everyday women would wear, look at images of Lucille Ball, Sandra Dee, Doris Day, or Audrey Hepburn instead. Even better, look at images of everyday people in the decade of interest. It’s important to know what people actually wore in the past to understand their real culture instead of the culture we think they should have had.