Maybelline added Sex Appeal during the 1920's

The horrors of the Great War lead to sex appeal in the 1920's and advertisers capitalized on it.

The 1920's were the beginning, of liberation for women, from being thought of as child-bearers and homemakers. to co-equals with men in society.

It was the first decade to emphasize youth culture over the older generations Civil War mentality.

Young people began testing their new boundaries with more and more outrageous forms of behavior, as fast cars, short skirts and free thinking changed the rules of the game. 

Bathing suits in 1929, were made for board-thin, young figured women, who wanted total liberation, for their body as well as their mind.

Here is a photo, of my great aunt Bunny at 25, at Lake Zurich, Chicago, showing off, the art of looking feminine yet liberated, in 1929.  All these wonderful, vintage photos are from her, 83 year old album. I was lucky enough to get copies, before she died at 90 years of age.  

The Jazz Age represented, restlessness, idolization of youth, and dissatisfaction with the status quo.

My great aunt Bunny, on the right, (Nana's younger sister,) was 25 in this photo, and was beginning to develop a more womanly figure.  Fashion in the 1920's, was especially designed for girls with no breasts, hips or body fat.  Girls began to look like boys and boys like girls. 

"[The flapper] symbolized an age anxious to enjoy itself, anxious to forget the past, anxious to ignore the future." (from Jacques Chastenet, "Europe in the Twenties" in Purnell's History of the Twentieth Century)

Young women in the 1920s, didn't want the drudgery of social conventions and routine of daily life.  Of Course, the Film industry and Maybelline helped shape this idea.

Fashion and Maybelline, in the late 1920's appealed to the modern woman who wanted liberation from a repressive Victorian  past.

Single and married women in the cities and the country came to enjoy the comfort and ease, of the new relaxed style in fashion and eye make-up, that were once considered, for Flappers only. 

     

Advertising helped shape a new identity for the Jazz Age, generation - making it sexy, for both men and women to smoke, drink out of a flask and have the power to spend on anything they wanted, even if they didn't need it

Tom Lyle Williams shaped the new image, for a liberated woman in the 1920s, when he contracted Clara Bow and Louise Brooks, to infuse glamour into

Maybelline advertisements. 

Sharrie Williams on Good Morning Arizona

Maybelline's Silent Film Models, Colleen Moore and Louise Brooks, both Beautiful and Brilliant in their own way

Because she was a respected actress before she was known as a flapper, she made the flapper respectable. By removing the fear many held towards this new movement, she made it possible for a new generation of independent young woman to appear on the screen and to explore new degrees of independence in the real world.https://sites.google.com/site/colleenmooresite/

Colleen the sweet girl next door Flapper

 

Louise Brooks  represented the sexy American Flapper.

Louise Brooks was one of the most fascinating personalities of Hollywood, always being compared with her most important characterization as protagonist: Lulu in Georg Wilhelm Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929). Along with her beauty and talent she had an independent streak and refused to accept the restrictive role that women had in American society, and pretty much went her own way, which caused quite a bit of controversy. Not everyone found her rebellious nature off-putting,

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000315/bio

Colleen Moore has a permanent dollhouse exhibition in Chicago . After leaving film she came back to Chicago. She was brilliant and became a partner at Merrill Lynch. The name her book is Cast of Killers. She was a multifaceted person... a movie producer as well. She and King Vidor were going  to collaborate on a movie about the murder of a director named Taylor.  It seems Louise Brooks was more successful Than Colleen Moore. 

Comment by Linda Hughes, Maybelline's namesake, Mabel Williams granddaughter.

Thank you Linda for the idea for this post. After watching both video's my take is, because of the 1920's, the audience was more attracted to a wild, rebellious sex siren, than a sweet talented actress. Sex appeal always wins. Maybelline ads were based on it, in the most modest way. 

Rita Hayworth, Maybelline's sexiest model, ever.

During the filming of GILDA, Rita Hayworth appeared in this Maybelline ad.  She was such a big hit that her dress, her glove, her pose became an icon

She was the leading lady to the world's leading men - She danced with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly - acted with Tracy, Grant, Cagney and Cooper - she was married to Orson Welles and Aly Khan.

 Rita Hayworth was America's favorite pin-up girl - she was the folly, grandeur, romance and beauty of Hollywood in it's prime - when it dazzled not only America, but the entire world. She was the incomparable Rita Hayworth.

Rita Hayworth: Portrait of a Love Godess - by John Kobal - 1983 Biography of America's Fave Pin-Up Girl.

4 used copies available on Amazon.

Rita Hayworth, magazine covers, with Frank Sinatra singing "I've Got You Under My Skin."

Two days left to bid on Hedy Lamarr, vintage makeup bag.  Ebay

Maybelline's Wonder Woman, Linda Carter.

Provocative and Sexy Maybelline's

 Super Hero!!!

best known for being Miss World USA and as the star of the 1970s television series, The New Original Wonder Woman (1975–77) and The New Adventures of Wonder Woman (1977-79).

Maybelline's Wonder Woman, 1984.

Wonder Woman is a warrior Princess of the Amazons (based on the Amazons of Greek mythology) and was created by Marston, an American, as a "distinctly feminist role model whose mission was to bring the Amazon ideals of love, peace, and sexual equality to a world torn by the hatred of men."[2] Known in her homeland as Diana of Themyscira, her powers include superhuman strength, flight ( even though the original Wonder Woman did not have this ability), super-speed, super-stamina, and super-agility. She is highly proficient in hand-to-hand combat and in the art of tactical warfare. She also possesses an animal-like cunning and a natural rapport with animals, which has in the past been presented as an actual ability to communicate with the animal kingdom. She uses her Lasso of Truth, which forces those bound by it to tell the truth, a pair of indestructible bracelets, a tiara which serves as a projectile, and, in some stories, an invisible airplane.

Click on Video to see Linda Carter, Wonder Woman in a 1984, Maybelline commercial.

          Click video to see Wonder Woman in action.

Maybelline's Love Goddess, Rita Hayworth, 1946.

Maybelline's Glamorous Super Model and film Goddess Rita Hayworth - a favorite GI Pin Up Girl.

In the 1930s, Rita Hayworth (1918-1987) was confined to leads in "B" pictures, but through much of the 1940s she became the undisputed sex goddess of Hollywood films and the hottest star at Columbia Studios.


Whether illuminating the screen with a song and dance or beaming from a magazine photo, Rita Hayworth was an unforgettable sight. Capitalizing on her inherited beauty and talent to become a legendary motion picture star, Hayworth captured the hearts of countless American servicemen during the 1940s. At her peak, she epitomized American beauty,

Every woman in the world wanted the sex appeal love goddess, Rita Hayworth exuded on camera with her bedroom eye's batting from the silver screen.  Every serviceman dreamed of coming home to a doll like the voluptuous Rita Hayworth and Tom Lyle capitalized on her selling power.  During the World War ll in America romance was portrayed in every advertisement from the beauty of Maybelline eyes to the chic sex appeal of Chesterfield cigarettes.  Young love meant morale building and that encouraged the boys fighting for their country to come home soon.  Rita Hayworth epitomised, youth, energy, romance and hope for bright future, a better future.  She was the seductive siren who called the boy's home with a glint of promise in her beautiful Maybelline eyes.

Who wouldn't want to come home to a sex goddess like glamorous, sexy, gorgeous Rita Hayworth!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q1SMBjfSjI  click here to see Rita singing in her famous 1946 film, Gilda (1946) - a black-and-white film noir directed by Charles Vidor. It stars Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth in her signature role as the ultimate femme fatale.

Read more about Maybelline and the Hollywood Star System in The Maybelline Story.  Buy your copy form Amazon for a greatly reduced price today. 

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