GGA or
Good Girl Art is a
pin-up/
cheesecake style of
trashy novel and
comic book covers roughly from the
1940s to the
1960s. The term is frequently used on
eBay and other auction sites, but has by now been expanded to describe just about any kind of sexy, campy or quaint
vintage cover art.
Originally the term indicated images of women showing a considerable amount of leg or breast, but often accidentally (wind, gravity, over-eager dogs) and while still remaining decent, wholesome and non-threatening. This stood in opposition to Bad Girl Art, in which women wielded weapons or were aggressive, physically or sexually. As the 1950s rolled around the covers became more lurid and sleazy, making the women more self-consciously seductive and blurring the line between Good Girl and Bad Girl art. On the other hand women began to be pictured as victims, either tied up, threatened or placed in precarious situations. In the early 1960s the pictures became even more explicit, sometimes showing a hint of nipple or butt crack, but by then various forms of softcore pornography began to drift into the mainstream, making GGA mostly irrelevant.