by SandyMazza

The pin-ups in Janette Valentine’s photos don’t just perch precariously on the edges of chairs and lay lazily on couches with droopy eyelids like the provocateurs of the 1930s. They look like they can hold their own and – as if to prove the point – some of them show off their ink, carry a blade and liquor.
Valentine started her Miami-based pin-up photography business called Terribly Girly about five years ago and, since then, has added edginess to the kitschy genre while still turning out sexy photos of everyday women.
“Pin-up is classy and flirty – a different kind of sexy where it’s not flashy,” Valentine said. “It’s sexy in her own way. It doesn’t have to be trashy. It’s flirty, playful. I prefer to leave things to the imagination.”
Women who go to Valentine to be remade into a saucy vixen are sometimes just looking for a fun experience, and sometimes want a post-breakup confidence boost, she said. Some of the pictures are taken as gifts, for an alternative bridal party, or as a celebration after losing weight.
Richie Bulldog, creative director and co-owner of SoTattooed.com, hired Valentine to shoot photos for the Web site because Valentine’s style is so similar to his.
“I was looking for the perfect photog for some concepts I was trying to develop, and one of the models we used referred me to her Web site, TerriblyGirly.com,” Bulldog said. “One look at her photos and I said: ‘She’s terribly perfect!’”

Valentine’s look fuses the ultra-girly style of the 1930s glamor girl with the edgy and creative individual modern styles of the women who pose. Often, that means plenty of tattoos curling around garter belts, bullet bras and stockings.
Valentine said she has been drawn to that look since she was a teenager, when she got her first tattoo.
“When I was 17 I skipped school, went to a record store and got a tattoo in the back of the store,” she said. “It was a star, just something small and random. It was my own private way to rebel.”
Since then, the 34-year-old former makeup artist has gotten her back, sides and arms tattooed with a pin-up cowgirl, a lipstick-bullet-shooting skull, a gypsy holding a crystal ball (because she’s into astrology) and a crown.
Though she loves the look, Valentine – who also moonlights as a bassist in the hard rock band Shroud Eater – acknowledges she doesn’t know when or how it was created.
“The look might be more of a west coast thing,” she said. “But I don’t know how it came together. Some of the girls I photograph look like that all the time. But, for some girls, wearing red lipstick is a really big deal because they’ve never done it.”