Overview:
Back when your Grandpa was a bucking young lad, there was a specific kind of exciting image that titillated men, young and old, throughout the USA. Shyness with a hint of eroticism was the allure of the Pin-Up, a type of poster that featured some of the most beautiful women to have ever rolled through the printing press. Some of these women were famous actresses such as Betty Grable, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe and, my favorite, Kim Novak. After its 50s and 60s heyday, the concept of the Pin-Up Girl persisted throughout the following decades but veered from the traditional coy and innocent mood of the classics. There has been a resurgence of this style in recent years, along with the burlesque popularity boom of 2004, and an increasing amount of guys have discovered Pin-Up Girls for the first time. Thankfully there are a couple of sites online that can offer modernized pin-up style content to satisfy your retro lust. Pin-Up Wow has only been around for 18 months but they've already got a cult following going.

Logins and passwords entered, you'll hit the main Pin-Up Wow members' page - a colorfully, if slightly garishly, designed page that gives a pretty good indication of what's in store. Littered around the page you'll find some of the many cute young women of today that identify with the Pin-Up culture so much that they've decided on how best to express themselves: by dressing up in corsets, garter belts and frilly panties and pretending to be a shy, awkward bombshell. The main page lists the most recent updates - giving a good handful of preview images for good measure - as well as a news ticker on the right hand side of the page and, of course, the requisite menu bar. This menu bar is your main source of navigation features and you'll make many a mouse-click on the various options it provides: Home, My Admin, Galleries, Albums, Stars, Guests, Forum, Fantasy, Links and Support (well, hopefully not that last one).

As is my usual practice, I hit up the model index (Stars) and see who's around. There are six "stars" of Pin-Up Wow as well as about a dozen guests. The stars are known as such because they are the most prominently featured models. Other girls may come and go but the stars are the constant driving force behind most of the content. Out of the six, Carla Brown was the star that looked most authentically like a Pin-Up Girl from days gone by, so I chose her. Carla hails from Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, England and has a BA with honors in Sociology and Politics. She aspires to be a journalist but, in the mean time, enjoys being a pin-up model for her many fans. Beneath her photo portrait and brief bio section is a Q&A between the model and one of the webmasters. Here we get to know the girls' personalities before getting to know their bodies. Links to photo and video content (as well as downloadable desktop wallpaper) are provided and, when clicked, will take you exactly where you'll want to go.

The photo galleries of Pin-Up Wow are listed in a pretty basic manner, with three thumbnail preview images, the date the set was added, the number of pics, and of course a title, synopsis and the star's name. After choosing which set you'd like to view in full, clicking any of the images will bring you to that set's page, from which you can view the shots individually. There are zip files available and they're worth checking out, seeing as they contain every photo from the shoot in either high (2540x1700) or low (1060x709) resolution. It is strange that these zip files are linked from the photo galleries' intro listing and not from within the gallery itself but, then again, there are a few things about this site that don't really make sense. Anyway, once inside the gallery itself, you'll find all the images, there are an average of 75 in each set, arranged quite plainly on the page. There's only one thing left to do from here, and that is to click some thumbnails. The full-size image opens up in the same window and looks very nice at a resolution of 1060x709 pixels. Well worth checking out, all you still image fans out there.

Carla's video content can be found and are available in pretty much the same way the photo galleries are - a similar listing page, navigated to the same way (clicking on "Carla's Videos") and the same scene, just presented in a different way. The videos come in two size options, high and low resolution, and can be downloaded simply by clicking the link on the scene listing page. Since you can't navigate your web browser to the inside of a video, there's no individual video page to see. The runtime is also given along with a synopsis, title and model's name but, other than that, there's very little to see on this page. Once you've started a download, there's nothing to do but wait. The low-res video features a resolution of 320x240 and looks quite low-rent. The high res version hits a peak of 640x480 pixels and, while it looks far better than the low-res version, it still isn't clear or dynamic enough to warrant much attention. The videos themselves are mostly quite boring, I must say. The majority simply function as a video recording of the photo shoot and you'll definitely get sick of seeing the girls pose for photos while some whiny guy instructs them on how to use a faux-antique prop.

The photos do a substantially better job of entertaining and arousing with their pseudo old-timey style. That's probably the biggest sticking point with a site like this. The whole pin-up shtick feels like a shallow attempt to make a quick buck and doesn't seem authentic or sincere in any way. It's like, you know when you're watching a porno flick and it's obvious that the actress really loves to fuck, She's not overacting and she's not lying there like a cold fish. Everything seems almost genuine for a moment and it's awesome. Well, that's not how it is here. Aside from the pretentious nature of the modern pin-up style, the other main detracting factor is that the women's bodies simply don't suit the pin-up style. Most of them are very slim with small to medium-sized breasts and a tight ass. Pin-ups were much more curvaceous than this and I can't help but wish someone like Gianna Michaels or Penny Flame would get in on this pin-up game instead of the girls of Pin-Up Wow.

The other sections of the site, forum, fantasy, etc., provide a decent amount of supplementary entertainment, although the entertainment provided by the fantasy section is only available to the more fiscally flippant members (you'll need $695 to enjoy a customized photo set of your favorite model in your favorite fantasy situation, so it's definitely off-limits for most people). The forum, however, is open to all members and allows you to interact with each other and the site's models. All of this comes to you for a monthly membership charge of $24.95. Think it's good enough to spring for or are you less than thrilled about the prospect of treading through the site? If you're stuck between the two, let me help you decide by way of a few pros and cons. Whaddya say, Mac?

Pros:
- The content is 100% exclusive and you'll struggle to find much other modern pin-up content elsewhere on the 'net.

- The daily updates are great! Something new is being added all the time.

- The high-resolution images look very nice and show great detail.

- The forum is a very enjoyable place to interact with your fellow members and the site's models.

Cons:
- The production quality leaves something to be desired. Everything seems pretty low budget and thrown together. The videos are especially disappointing.

- The website design is rather gaudy and cheap; it doesn't impart the right kind of mood that's required for a site like this. A redesign is essential.

- The girls just aren't the right kind of models for this kind of content.

- Videos could definitely use a resolution boost.

Conclusion:
For those of you who have been intrigued by the recent resurgence of pin-up and burlesque culture, it might very well be worth your while to take a gander at Pin-Up Wow. If your quality control and bullshit sensors are set to "HIGH," though, you'll probably leave dissatisfied thanks to the poor site design, weak video content and all around insincerity of the site and its content. If you're a little less critical and just want to see some cute gals posing in 40s fashions then you'll love it.