Bettie Page on the cover of ‘Eyeful’ magazine.
One of the best parts of my gig working as a writer for Dangerous Minds is the fact that I get to share things that I love with all of you groovy readers. While I honestly don’t have a favorite topic (though it’s probably a toss up between Black Sabbath and vintage Van Halen), I really do love writing about vintage magazines. I’m still a huge connoisseur of tangible media and whenever I can I like to pick up old magazines—a trick I learned from a successful colleague of mine. It’s an exercise that almost always leads to me stumbling on something I can blog about.
Such is the case with today’s post about Eyeful magazine which got its start back in 1942 purporting to be a vehicle for the cause of “Glorifying the American Girl.” Publisher and journalist Robert Harrison, who would later launch “the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world,” Confidential, promoted the magazine using the following words “Gals, Gags, Giggles.” Someone being a fan of at least one of those three things is a pretty sure bet. Harrison’s come-on worked and the cheeky magazine would have a nearly thirteen-year run under Harrison’s reign as one of New York’s most successful publishers. Another reason Eyeful was a hit was the fact that most of their models were burlesque dancers who clearly knew how to make the image of a housewife or “girl next door” be sexy and appealing without showing any actual nudity.
Of the numerous famous faces who graced the cover and appeared in silly sexist pictorials inside the magazine was the iconic Bettie Page who, according to the book Bettie Page Confidential by Bunny Yeager appeared on and in Eyeful while she was still working as a secretary on Wall Street trying to save money for acting lessons. Awww. I’ve included images of covers of Eyeful that feature actual photographs which were not as common as the classic illustrated covers that routinely appeared on front of the magazine. I’ve also posted some tongue-in-cheek humor pictorials from Eyeful such as “How Strippers are Hired” and “How to Train a Wife.” Har har har. If you are a collector of girl-centric magazines, copies of Eyeful are pretty easy to come by.
As I mentioned previously, although there is no actual nudity in the images that follow, they are still fairly NSFW. YAY!
A picture from inside ‘Eyeful’ magazine.
More after the jump…