As American as freedom

When it comes to iconography, the pin-up is quite possibly as American as freedom itself. No celebration of freedom would be complete without the vintage pick-me-up that reached a new height of popularity during the 1940s as a way to boost morale among troops fighting the good fight against the axis during World War II.

Pin-up girls have decorated everything from the noses of aircraft to bases as remote as those in Antarctica. And as luck would have it, the site The Pin Up Files houses thousands of pin-up images from all the greats, from Gil Elvgren to Bill Medcalf and Antonio Vargas, whose work is featured above. eBay is also an excellent place to find the weird sort of stuff that makes for excellent conversation starters -- case in point, this double deck of Varga Girl cards, old copies of Wink Magazine, as well as all kinds of cigarette cases decorated with the timeless icon.

Of course, if that's not patriotic enough, you may instead prefer to indulge in the collection of the more proper art of government-sanctioned propaganda. Pictured above are the WWII classics "It's Our Fight Too!" (starting at $24.99) featuring Rosie the Riveter operating a drill, the Navy poster "Avenge Pearl Harbor" (starting at $9.99), and "Loose Lips Might Sink Ships" (starting at $87.99).

There are a number of other jewels to be found on both Great Big Canvas and AllPosters, including "No Room for Rumors" (starting at $16.99) featuring Uncle Sam, "Tell Nobody, Not Even Her" (starting at $16.99), "Don't Just Kiss 'Em Goodbye" (starting at $59.99), not to mention a little bit of something for the programmer, the Second Amendment nut, and anyone who is tired of the million variations of that "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster that has reached meme status in recent years (that poster, by the way, was originally produced by the British Ministry of Information as propaganda during WWII).

Of course, if you're the geeky type, your cup of tea -- err, perhaps bourbon is more fitting to the patriotic spirit -- is probably going to be more along the lines of another American contribution to the history of the world: the idealistic posters created for General Dynamics by the Swiss graphic designer Erik Nitsche. Nitsche illustrated a hopeful vision for the future of technology in 1953, in tandem with the Atoms for Peace program. You can see the posters at the General Dynamics archive or acquire them through Un Deux Trois Galerie.

Put that freedom to good use this holiday weekend. Or, as Lana Del Rey put it, "be young, be dope, be proud -- like an American."