Gibson Girl

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A USPS stamp depicting a Gibson girl.

The Gibson Girl was the personification of the feminine ideal as portrayed in the satirical pen and ink illustrated stories created by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson during over 15 years spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

A photograph of Camille Clifford, showing the S-curve silhouette of the fashionable Edwardian 'swan-bill corset'.

The Gibson Girl was tall, slender yet with ample bosom, hips and bottom in the S-curve torso shape achieved by wearing a swan-bill corset; she was fine-featured, and achingly beautiful. The images of her epitomized the late nineteenth and early 20th-century Western preoccupation with statuesque, youthful features, and ephemeral beauty. Her neck was thin and her hair piled high upon her head in the contemporary bouffant, pompadour, and chignon ("waterfall of curls") fashions.

Many models posed for Gibson Girl-style illustrations, including Gibson's wife, Irene Langhorne, (who may have been the original model) and Anaïs Nin. The most famous Gibson Girl was probably the Danish-American stage actress, Camille Clifford, whose towering coiffure and long, elegant gowns wrapped around her hourglass figure and tightly corseted wasp waist defined the style.

Among Gibson Girl illustrators were Howard Chandler Christy whose work celebrating American "beauties" was similar to Gibson's and Harry G. Peter, who was most famous for his art on Wonder Woman comics.

The Gibson Girl personified beauty, limited independence, personal fulfillment (she was pictured attending college and choosing the best mate, but she was never pictured as part of a suffrage march), and American national prestige. By the outbreak of World War I, changing fashions caused the Gibson Girl to fall from favor. Women of the World War I era favored a sober, masculine suit (first designed and popularized by Coco Chanel) over the elegant dresses, bustle gowns, shirtwaists, and terraced, shorter skirts favored by the Gibson Girl.

[edit] Survival radio

An RAAF survival radio transmitter carried by World War II aircraft on over-water operations was named the 'Gibson Girl' because of its 'hour-glass' shape. It included a fold-up/down metal frame box kite for which the flying line was an aerial wire. A hand-crank generator provided power for the distress radio signal.