Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at – nothing – at nothing, simply. What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss – absolute bliss! – as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?”
Katherine Mansfield
My bar for these illustrations is pretty high: The woman can’t be having fake fun. There are many, many great illustrations from the Golden Age in which the woman appears to be trying to have fun, but she is posing for the gaze.
The women and girls below are non-performatively having fun without a thought to who else might be looking on.
Poster by Boccasile, 1948. The mother holds up her work for the camera but the girl seems to be enjoying those iron-on decals for the fun of it.
That said, it’s amazing how frequently artists depict a man or a boy looking on at these women.
Richard ‘Dick’ Sargent (American, 1911-1979) 1960 for The Saturday Evening PostCountry Gentleman Magazine August 1940 Water Skiing McClelland BarclayTHE GIRL’S OWN PAPER, PRE WAR MAGAZINE AUG 1936
Now for some illustrations of girls having fun, with no apparent thought to anyone’s gaze.
The Golden Annual for Girls 1926 rowingThe Schoolgirls’ Own Annual 1930 Her Place In The TeamThe Schoolgirls’ Own Annual 1930 The Morcove Mischief MakerFirst flight 1938Henri-Edmond Cross, born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix, (French painter and printmaker) 1856-1910 Peasant Woman Stretched Out On Grass 1890Wassily Kandinsky (Russian-French artist) 1866-1944 Kochel – Gabriel Münter, 1902Distant Thunder (1961) Andrew WyethPhilip Wilson Steer’s ‘Tired Out,’ painted at Walberswick on the Suffolk coast in 1884Andrew Wyeth (American painter) Summer Day, 1957Gustave Caillebotte Woman Seated Beneath a Tree 1874Cicely Mary BarkerThe Lark by George Henry oil on canvas, 1926Distant Thunder (1961) Andrew WyethRichard Ansdell – The Highland Lassie 1877‘The Aunties Series’ by Finnish Illustrator, Inge Löök (Ingebor Lievonen) artist and gardener from Pernaja, Finland. 1951Inge LookMarius van Dokkum (1957) Dutch artist and IllustratorDuane Bryers created a popular calendar girl who subverted expectations of calendar girls, posed for the male gaze. Hilda is not only chubbier than your average pin up girl, but also has way more fun.
Header illustration: The Schoolgirls’ Own Annual 1930 A Dash For Freedom
