This timeline provides a sociohistorical context for Bunny Yeager's 1955 Photograph of Bettie Page. 

Timeline

Table of Events

Date Event Created by
1953

Linnea Eleanor "Bunny" Yeager

  • Linnea Eleanor Bunny Yeager was the photographer of the image in question. She initially started her career as a designer and model herself. Her bathing suit designs caught the eye of the American population. Yeager became a recognized model by taking various jobs throughout the United States. Desired by photographers and magazines, Yeager moved to Miami where she was reaching her peak in the modeling and fashion world. In the early 1950s, she changed the course of her career and debuted as a skilled photographer. With her own experience as a former model and the help of a night class at Lindsay-Hopkins Technical College, Yeager found herself in love with the art of photography. With one of her first assignments for her photography course, Bunny obtained the attention and her first professional image was sold to the Eye magazine in order to be used as their cover for an issue of March in 1954. Her innovative ideas for photoshoots such as capturing images of models in natural light lead her to be soon recognized by the public and her work soon appeared in Playboy. Her first issue featuring Bettie Page, allowed her to become responsible for the centerfold page of the following Playboy issues. 
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    Bunny Yeager How I Photograph Myself Press Release. www.gavlakgallery.com/attachment/en/5374f947a9aa2c98748b4568/TextOneCol….

     

    Melvin, Chase. “Bunny Yeager, Famed 'Queen of Pin-up Photographers,' Passes at 85.” Digital Trends, Digital Trends, 31 May 2014, www.digitaltrends.com/photography/bunny-yeager-queen-of-pin-up-photogra….

     
     
 Andrea Arguello
1953

Bettie Page

  • Bettie Page was the model photographed in this picture. She gained popularity around the same time as Bunny Yeager for her pin-up girl image. A “pin-up girl” was a lady who had fabulous and coquettish characteristics that commonly belong to the girls in “pin-ups”, now known as posters. Evidently, Page was perceived as a natural beauty with a coquette personality, a combination that caught the eyes of the male population throughout America including photographers and people involved in the film industry. Her involvement in different New York productions started with her participation in an internship at Sea Cliff Summer Theater located on Long Island where she studied acting under the Austrian-American actor Herbert Berghoff. Yeager and Page met and collaborated before the publication of this playboy issue. Their collaboration involved the detailed creation of a photoshoot solely of Bettie Page, which later ended up creating around a thousand photographs of the model each taken by Yeager. Thanks to this collaboration, Page’s name was becoming more famous in the media world. By the year 1955, Bettie Page had officially become the “Miss Pinup Girl of the World”. At that time Page was contacted to make an appearance in Playboy magazine for the centerfold page as a result this image was produced and later published.

  • “Biography of Bettie Page.” Bettie Page, www.bettiepage.com/about/.

     

    Levine, Ira Steven. “Bettie Page: The Case of the Vanishing Pinup.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 25 June 2018, www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bettie-page-the-case-of-the-v….

     
 Andrea Arguello
circa. Winter 1953

The creation of Playboy Magazine

  • The beginning of Playboy magazine took place in the year of 1953. The creator of the rising magazine, Hugh Hefner, previously attended Northeastern University as a rigorous sociology student. Evidently, by studying American society for years, he was able to identify popular demands. Taking advantage of his knowledge he later came up with the idea of creating a new magazine based on presenting women from an erotic point of view. The issue with which Playboy debuted had an image of the beloved public figure Marilyn Monroe portraying a white dress on the cover. As expected, Hefner’s new creation gained popularity making the demand for the product have a rapidly increasing demand. Even though the magazine itself was being extremely successful, Hefner dealt with his first of several lawsuits in the year 1955. The United States’s post office charged him with spreading inappropriate and explicit content that alludes to an unpleasant image of the female gender. Regardless of the accusing statement being true, Hefner won the trial without affecting Playboy’s reputation. Later in the same year, the American economy was at its peak due to the success of the stock market - bull market. Causing the wage minimum to be raised to 1 dollar per hour which was double the original price of the acclaimed Playboy magazine. Making it affordable to the majority of the American population and raising its sale rates. 
  • The reason that I offered that background concerning those three events is that it helps me to explain what the photograph of Bettie Page was doing socially and culturally in the United States of America when Linnea Eleanor “Bunny” Yeager produced it and Playboy Magazine published it. Jumping back to the 1950s in the United States of America, when the American economy was at its peak and people were seeking “the good American life”, this photograph of Bettie Page was taken and later published by the then-new Playboy magazine. Playboy magazine has had the same objective ever since its first issue was published, which was to satisfy male buyers. This is a perfect example of the influence that the male gaze has over society. Even though the concept of Playboy Magazine was something innovative for the time period when it was created, the magazine provided attention to the Male American population’s needs. Additionally, the magazine supplied a brand new point of view of the female body. The initial idea of the magazine was to portray an image of “the girl next door”. Evidently, the purpose of the magazine rapidly changed by displaying nude photographs of female models. The magazine intended to demonstrate the female body as something erotic and at the same time to display sexuality to the public eye. By spreading the idea of sexuality through explicit photos of nude female bodies Playboy gained popularity among the American population. Even though this image of Bettie Page demonstrates vulnerability by her posing nude, it also symbolizes her being authentically self-confident and bold. The impact of this magazine on American society led to promote a sexual revolution by normalizing the objectifying the female body from a sexual point of view.
  • The New York Times. “Playboy in Popular Culture.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Sept. 2017, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/28/business/media/playboy-hugh-hefn….
 Andrea Arguello

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PSU Altoona Spring 2022 Sexuality and Modern Visual Culture