Charles Dana Gibson
Fads and Fashion Ideal American Girls
She was tall and graceful as a gazelle, with a long neck
balanced on broad shoulders and a mass of upswept wavy hair.
She played tennis and golf, rode horses and bikes, and
looked as coolly elegant in her shirtwaists as she did in
evening dress. She was America's ideal, the wholly imaginary
but throughly convincing Gibson Girl.
When the first of his "girls" appeared in one of
Charles Dana Gibson's illustrations in the early 1890's,
America was still something of a social backwater.
The country's newly rich were prone to proving their worth
by marrying their daughters off to titled Europeans,
no matter how fusty or gout ridden. Gibson disapproved.
And in his lampoons of such behavior, he created an image
of American womanhood where none had existed before.
In her sweeping skirts and towering pompadour, the Gibson Girl,
who appeared week after week in the humor magazine Life,
among other publications, was an enticingly noble creature.
Slightly aloof, she was a goddess forever being wooed by
unworthy suitors. Not even the squarejawed, clean-shaven
Gibson Man quite measured up. But while she was definitely
upper crust, she was not a snob. In short, she was a paragon.
Men idolized her and women looked to her to learn how to dress,
walk, sit, and dine. "You can always tell when a girl is taking
the Gibson Cure," wrote on observer, "by the way she fixes her hair."
In fact, the whole country seemed to be taking the Gibson Cure.
People filled their parlors and bedrooms with franchised likenesses
of the girl, framed as lithographs, engraved on wood, printed on
chinaware, embossed on spoons, and repeated on wallpaper. So great
was her popularity between the 1890's and World War I that Gibson
earned as much as $65,000 a year, and women on two continents claimed
to have been his original model.
During those prewar decades the Gibson Girl made a lot of people feel
pride in being American, for hers was a style that few could resist.
"Parents in the United States are no better than eleswhere," wrote one
European visitor, "but their daughters! Divinely tall, brows like Juno,
throats that Aphrodite might envy.
Discovering America's Past
Fads and Fashion
Gibson Doll Links
Charles Dana Gibson's illustrations in the early 1890's,
America was still something of a social backwater.
The country's newly rich were prone to proving their worth
by marrying their daughters off to titled Europeans,
no matter how fusty or gout ridden. Gibson disapproved.
And in his lampoons of such behavior, he created an image
of American womanhood where none had existed before.
In her sweeping skirts and towering pompadour, the Gibson Girl,
who appeared week after week in the humor magazine Life,
among other publications, was an enticingly noble creature.
unworthy suitors. Not even the squarejawed, clean-shaven
Gibson Man quite measured up. But while she was definitely
upper crust, she was not a snob. In short, she was a paragon.
Men idolized her and women looked to her to learn how to dress,
walk, sit, and dine. "You can always tell when a girl is taking
the Gibson Cure," wrote on observer, "by the way she fixes her hair."
People filled their parlors and bedrooms with franchised likenesses
of the girl, framed as lithographs, engraved on wood, printed on
chinaware, embossed on spoons, and repeated on wallpaper. So great
was her popularity between the 1890's and World War I that Gibson
earned as much as $65,000 a year, and women on two continents claimed
to have been his original model.
pride in being American, for hers was a style that few could resist.
"Parents in the United States are no better than eleswhere," wrote one
European visitor, "but their daughters! Divinely tall, brows like Juno,
throats that Aphrodite might envy.
Discovering America's Past
Fads and Fashion
Gibson Doll Links
The Gibson Girl
Greeting Cards
Charles Dana Gibson's Gibson Girls
Romantic Songs and Lyrics
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