I, like many people, have a wide range of interests. Reading and video games have topped that list most of my life. Writing comes in just behind those. After that, it’s a long and mixed grab bag of stuff, much of it carry overs from childhood or early adult years. I love aviation, particularly from the period of the Wright brothers through the Korean war (especially WWI). I love music, and a wide variety of musical forms, but with a special nod towards 80’s and 90’s alternative bands that formed the soundtrack for my coming of age years.
And I love pinup.
Porn as an industry spams a broad spectrum of interests. Trust me, I know. I’m only human. There should be no shame in these things, but there are as anyone who grew up in a religious household will tell you. But porn is as old as art itself, and at times it can be confidently stated that our love of nudity and sex has actually driven technological advancement. Or at least modern mythology suggests that it was the wide availability of porn on VHS that helped drive the nail in the coffin of Betamax. It’s a myth we repeat because it just makes so much damned sense.
Apocryphal or not, porn has come a long way from it’s early roots on Roman freso’s and later re-trenching in mid-20th century “girlie” magazines. The range of what you can explore online is infinite. I won’t talk about whether that’s good or bad; whether porn is liberating or exploitative; whether we are better and worse for this cornucopia of titillation and an explosion of libido expansion (much expansion; very explosion). Instead, I want to talk to you today about my favorite kind of porn, which isn’t really porn but certainly did a lot to codify the male gaze of the 1940’s and 1950’s and inform the public of just where their eyes should linger when a woman passed by.
Pinups were a cultural staple of the United States that really took off during WWII, ostensibly to “keep up the morale of the troops.” Well, I’m certain many people found their morale lifted, among other parts. The roots of pinup go back further, to late Victoria era French advertising, at least as far as I know. But the French are always ahead of us when it comes to appreciations of the human body. We are, as I’ve said many times, deeply crippled by our adherence to a history of Puritanical hypocrisy.
I have a particular fondness for pinups, particularly the work of Gil Elvgren, whose calendars have graced my desk in the past. Again, I’ll leave it to others to talk about whether this change in clothing styles and the presentation of women’s bodies were liberating or sexist (both is the right answer, but there’s nuances others are better trained to share with you). But it has a certain asthetic that appeals to me, at once sexual without the need to reveal all. The tease remains a powerful form of attraction, one that is lost when you can watch Pounded in the Butt by My Daddy’s Best Friend’s Cousin Clyde the Ranchhand Billionaire.
But no, that’s not what I want to talk to you about today. What I want to talk to you today about is the effect of celery on the type of elastic commonly used in women’s panties during the middle stretch of the 20th century. It’s a mystery that most people have forgotten about.
You see, there was a critical period when women’s drawers would simply hit the floor in response to the active anti-elastic field generated by celery. Apparently no one has publicly published ANY research into what was a troubling and apparently common problem for the modern woman. And yet, given that modern panties apparently stay in place, someone had to have done this research at some point. The development of the thong alone cannot explain the lack of panty falling today, even accounting for its greater ability to wedge itself into cracks for anti-gravity staying power. Many women don’t even wear thongs!
While the research has been lost to time, or hidden out of sheer embarrassment, the documentation of the effect has not. Here, for the first time, I will present the evidence of one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th century: the rise and fall of women’s panties and the celery that made it all happen:
This is a perfect example of the phenomena in action. A woman about town, doing her daily activities. Picking up the groceries. She approaches the parking meter to insert another coin so she can continue her errands. Suddenly, an errant gust of wind lifts her dress while simultaneously her panties fall right to the ground. Right in front of a bemused officer of the law who squints at her most delicate regions with what is not at all a leering smirk.
And wait, what’s this we see in the grocery bag? Is that… is that celery?
This is by no means one incident. The artist, Art Frahm, documented numerous instances of panties falling to the ground throughout this period.
See:
The elevator door opens. Wind roars up the shaft and squeezes through the cracks to lift this poor woman’s dress right as her elastic band loses its stretch under the powerful influence of the celery in her shopping bag. The elevator operator can only grin at his luck and thank the God of Celery for its bountiful gift today.
And again:
Is that a jack hammer in your hands, or is it a representation lacking any subtlety of how you want to jack off to the thought of this celery destroying the last shred of human dignity I had in this world as it reveals to you the fact that I am, indeed, a real blonde?
And it wasn’t just Frahm who discovered this troubling trend. Other artists, such as Jay Scott Pike, documented it as well:
The men rushing out to see her panties are a clue to the truth of my supposition. I suspect they were intimately familiar with this effect and, having noticed the celery in her bag, anticipated the fall of her virtue and the rise of their Roman empires.
Sometimes, the celery isn’t evident, but I can guarantee you its hidden somewhere nearby. I suspect some meaner boys, having learned of the effect of celery on panty elastics, spent all their paper route money buying celery to carry around with them.
Golf clap. “I’m going to give you a little advice. There’s a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the celery.”
Note: this is also a very good representation of repressed sexual need, aka “I just realized I’m gay.” The two men are looking at the golfer’s face and laughing. But the woman sitting down is staring right at the buttocks and has a look of surprised lust. She’s the one that will be asking for personal assistance with her putting technique after the round of golf is over.
I’m not even the first to report this phenomena (which is how I ripped off this idea in the first place). For more about this topic, go check out this post on the Institute of Official Cheer. There are some other great posts as well, check them out.
Yes, this is how my brain functions at 3:30 in the morning. You’re welcome very little.
The end.