The world’s most patriotic enterprise now includes everything from baked goods to vintage tin signs.
For those of you who haven’t seen Gina Elise’s pictures (or haven’t since Iowahawk promoted some of her pinups several years ago on his blog, or since Chris Muir featured her in “Day by Day” last month), her overarching mission is a charitable one: she produces calendars in an old-fashioned pinup style, and she presents those same calendars—in person, stateside—to veterans who were injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, she’s helping to provide state-of-the-art equipment to military hospitals.
So she’s not just a hot model—she’s a one-woman ministry to the U.S. Armed Forces. The calendars often feature 1940s style cars, bikes—and military hardware, natch.
You can order all kinds of products from Ms. Elise, including some of her pin-up outfits, which make great Halloween costumes (or souvenirs). But make sure you start ordering early this year; with calendar sales going up, she needs to start shipping those bread-and-butter items out early to get them to everyone before Christmas.
This year the calendars themselves (those for 2012) feature several images with the “nose art” (bomber decorations) of WWII great Hal Olsen. Mr. Olsen started as a mechanic, but became better known for the racy ladies he used to adorn airplanes in that era (his nose art paid for the art school he attended after the war).
That particular piece of nose art ran in the first color issue of National Geographic, by the way.
Olsen has explained the significance of nose art:
Nose art for the crew was a personalized reference to a piece of military hardware. You are trusting your life to the plane to get you back safely. You have to go through enemy territory . . . So nose art brought the crew together. It provided a signature for the unit. By putting a girl on a plane, the crews felt they were protected on their way out to bomb and patrol. It inspired the crews and gave them a sense of belonging to an organized team. The main purpose, I guess, was to inspire the crews to have faith they’d be coming back.
Buying the work of Ms. Elise combines all the best things in life: cheesecake, tributes to good industrial design, respect for the military, fine art, and charitable works.
Now you know what to get everyone for Christmas.
No, Ms. Elise is not an advertiser. But I am a fan.
- Excited
- Angry
- Not as Angry
- Bored
- Indifferent
- Sad
Undoubtedly, the world’s most patriotic enterprise, but a few folks outside the US also appreciate Gina’s work.
Like certain pro-freedom people of Chinese descent, I imagine . . . Ha! There’s one hazard in writing for an aggressively pro-American online magazine.
It’s related to the problem in writing about American exceptionalism: people think that you mean the U.S. has to always do the heavy lifting, when sometimes what you mean is that the U.S. should keep doing it if no one else is going to, or if no other country is as well-suited to the task in question.
The Cold War didn’t help, either: it got us all in the habit of saying “pro-Western” for “pro-democracy,” and seemed to imply that the East wasn’t Asia so much as Eastern Europe, and it’s decades-long dalliance with totalitarianism.
Language is a tricky devil. But I can put it to good use occasionally.
Very nice. And it’s true, the Invisible Man is a bit of a cad.
Exploiting an unfair advantage, I call it.
I’m a big fan of Gina Elise, too.
She’s the real deal, too. Everything goes to the checks she turns over to VA Hospitals–$50,000 so far and counting. When Gina attended the Oprah’s Favorite Things taping in Chicago, her first thoughts after the show was which items from her swag bag she could auction off to raise money for vets. I know since I got to meet her on the trip to Hines VA when she was here. She works a real job to pay her expenses like everyone else. When most people her age are thinking about a family and career, she’s planning her next visit to a VA Hospital. If anyone out ther is feeling flush, she needs donated calendars, t-shirts, and posters to hand out at her visits. She’s added a Bathing Beauties postcard set, some great new bumper stickers, beautiful retro tin signs, delicious baked goods to
the goods available at her site, so maybe you can actually buy a cheescake rather than just taking it all in with your eyes. Yes, Gina bakes too. And she does it all for you! If you know one of the Koch brothers, maybe you can get him to help complete her wish list of visiting all of the VA hospitals–or at least one in every State.