Gibson Girl

Her neck was thin and her hair piled high upon her head in the contemporary bouffant, pompadour, and chignon ("waterfall of curls") fashions.

She was a member of upper middle class society, always perfectly dressed in the latest fashionable attire appropriate for the place and time of day.

The Gibson Girl was also one of the new, more athletic-shaped women, who could be found cycling through Central Park, often exercised and was emancipated to the extent that she could enter the workplace.

[3] In addition to the Gibson Girl's refined beauty, in spirit, she was calm, independent and confident, and sought personal fulfillment.

[4] The New Woman was the more disconcerting of the two images at the time as she was seen as an example of change and disruption within the old patterns of social order, asking for the right to equal educational and work opportunities as well as progressive reform, sexual freedom and suffrage.

One memorable drawing shows dumbstruck men following a Gibson Girl's command to plant a young, leafless tree upside-down, roots in the air, simply because she wanted it that way.

Once married, she was shown deeply frustrated if romantic love had disappeared from her life, but satisfied if socializing with girlfriends or happy when doting on her infant child.

In drawings such as these there was no hint at pushing the boundaries of women's roles; instead they often cemented the long-standing beliefs held by many from the old social orders, rarely depicting the Gibson Girl as taking part in any activity that could be seen as out of the ordinary for a woman.

[10] The most famous Gibson Girl was probably the American-British stage actress, Camille Clifford, whose high coiffure and long, elegant gowns that wrapped around her hourglass figure and tightly corseted wasp waist defined the style.

In the newly developing art of cinema, although most leading actresses were at the cutting style of the day, the ones who came to embody it best were the Biograph girls, Florence Lawrence and to a more ingénue side of it, Mary Pickford.

The USAAF World War II-era SCR-578, and the similar post-war AN/CRT-3, survival radio transmitters carried by aircraft on over-water operations, were given the nickname "Gibson Girl" because of their "hourglass" shape; this allowed them to be held securely between the thighs whilst the generator handle was turned.