Yet for all of our knickers-up-to-there naughtiness, I can't help but wonder if the hourglass coquette is just another victim of fad revivalism — something mass-produced for lunch boxes and baby Ts, or cheaply framed and hung over the sofa. In a pop landscape that's swamped with sex — and not just Internet porn, but magazines like Maxim and Stuff, bootylicious music videos and Axe body spray commercials — is it still possible to be seduced by a non-pornographic image? Is cheesecake, as our parents and grandparents knew it, dead?

"Art can definitely make you yearn for more," says Dave Glass, a local painter and screenprinter who has traded in the retro pinup thing for years. His gritty, neon take on tattooed roller wenches and snarly-hot bald chicks is contemporary, but the models' poses are as old-fashioned as the way Glass reproduces his work — by hand. "Most of [my models] can break a man's heart in pieces if you get too close. Trust me."

Philly-based pinup photographer Kevin Loreaux's classic black-and-white and sepia-tone portraits are startling in their stylized antiquity, but it's his slick BDSM images that really tickle the groin. "I find that most people who are into [BDSM] only use photography as a crude way to document what they are doing," says Loreaux. "As an observer, I am much more interested in creating classic and lasting images. To document this subculture in a way that is neither pornographic or amateurish is very rewarding."

Chesney Willard, an illustration major at Moore College of Art and Design, thinks the hardest part about drawing calendar girls is putting a new spin on such a classic staple. "What may be titillating to one person may just be ridiculous to another," says Willard, whose most recent work reimagines pinups as pirates. "A pinup artist wants what any artist wants — to involve the viewer, and evoke something from them."

Painter Shayna V. McConville, who currently has a cheesecake- and striptease-inspired show up at Delicious Boutique and Corseterie, also stresses the importance of emotional resonance, particularly the painted subject's awareness of the viewer. "I tend to see any eroticism in my work taking the back shelf to other elements, including narrative and emotive qualities," says McConville. "I have seen artwork that is still titillating, but because of [its] context was not simply pornographic, [but] instead layered with concepts and meanings."

Although classic pinups of the Betty Page or Jayne Mansfield stripe are arguably more famous today than ever before, they're also saddled with that vintage kitsch factor — yes, they're beautiful, but nobody really finds this stuff bathroom-fodder hot. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe guys still jerk off to pictures of Pola Negri. And maybe 50 years from now, people will look at Jessica Simpson the way I look at Rita Hayworth.

"One person's kitsch is another person's treasure," says Loreaux. "What is considered truly lasting as art always takes years of retrospect. Only time will tell if Jessica Alba will create [a] lasting image. Who knew Jane Fonda as Barbarella would be so enduring?"