Erotic Postcards

Product Information

A similar change in fashion had, of course, taken place during the Napoleonic Wars, although the changes then had not been illustrated nearly as amusingly by La Belle Assemblée as they are now by the picture postcards. The lady with the hourglass shape could hide her ankles as much as she wanted with a frilly foam layer of long skirts, but at night she exposed her raised breasts almost to the nipples. We often hear that we are living in a corrupting, visually saturated, consumer culture, which threatens the innocence of girlhood. But representations of young girls in the European postcard trade at the turn of the 20th century cast doubt on this notion of an ideal, more innocent past.

By the turn of the next decade, motions to censor and govern public morality had failed. The year 1933 saw Prohibition repealed, and as the '30s wore on erotic photography became more visible and popular. Perhaps early 20th-century composer Cole Porter said it best in the song "Anything Goes:" Three eggs hide the sitter’s bosom. They allude to the symbol of fertility, while playing with the visual resemblance between the shape of breasts and eggs. A deftly positioned piece of cloth emphasises her hips thereby defining an inviting triangle. This veil of modesty also denotes the art of teasing in a game of hide and seek.Still, photographs of coquettes were risqué yet charming. Under the celebration of a candid femininity, they catered for both male and female audiences. More than a marginal phenomenon, the sexualisation of girlhood in the social fabric denotes a collective fascination with the young body as a modern ideal of femininity. A socially ingrained phenomenon The early Edwardian hourglass model was an anachronism well before the war, but the limitation of its strapped up waist had been replaced by the perhaps more severe limitation of the narrow hobble skirt; the war, however, freed the legs and bodies of the women, free to move in the world on the same wider scale as when they had had to do the work of the men. Napoleonic Wars In another unattributed French postcard (before 1904), we follow the adventures of Lili who is described as “playing around”. The caption informs us that she has a springtime smile, and that she is ready to wear her bedside wreath. Her white apparel and the laced clothing convey the idea of virginal innocence and freshness.

The first world war sounded the death knell of the postcards age. During the conflict, propaganda postcards had helped feed the nationalistic fervour but overall, demand for postcards plunged. The attraction of youthful femininity though, did not wane. Another medium offered more exciting prospects and creative potential than serialized postcards: the cinema. These early 1920s erotic postcards originated in France, like the majority of similar sexually-charged postcards of the era. In the United States, all cards of this sort were known as "French Postcards," no matter where they originated.

As a result, the identities of French postcard models -- as well those of the people who took them -- remain unknown to this day. It’s difficult to know how many prostitutes worked in London during the Victorian era. Estimates vary from 20,000 (probably) to 80,000 (unlikely). The doctor and writer William Acton (1813–1875), who is perhaps best-known for his books on masturbation or “ self-pollution“, estimated there were 210,000 prostitutes working in London during the 1850s. Acton based his figure on the 42,000 illegitimate births in London in 1851. He also once claimed to have counted 185 prostitutes on a walk from his surgery to his home. One suspects he considered every woman he passed as a prostitute.