With the click-clack of her high heels and the flutter of her false eyelashes, Melanie Louey looks more like a retro centrefold than a mum doing the school run.
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"I was one of those mums who was living day in, day out in tracksuit pants and a friend of mine was starting to wear clothes like that and I thought 'they look really nice'," she said.
The mother-of-two is part of Canberra's growing pin-up movement, reviving the glamorous guises of Hollywood starlets Jane Russell, Bettie Page and Jayne Mansfield.
But it's not a desire to be evocative which drives her to coif her hair and sport a swishing dress every day, she said.
Instead Louey, who is competing in Miss Pin Up Australia 2016 under the Bond Girl inspired pseudonym Jade Serpentine, said it's about clawing back time in a world which demands more and more of women.
"It's about caring for yourself. While I'm caring for my husband and my kids, doing the school runs, taking the kids to every activity they need to do after school, going to work, this '50s thing is more about me looking after me and spending time on me," she said.
Emily Wade, who is also competing as her pseudonym Trixie Bombshell, said the style of dress "liberates" her and makes her feel "empowered to be a woman".
"I remember watching my nanna sitting at the dresser doing her hair so finely, each curl was defined, the way her makeup was just looked flawless," she said.
"The way she did it seemed so feminine. A lot of women these days just get up, put on a pair of trackies and just go to the shops. That used to be me but the way you feel when you wear it, it just makes you feel powerful."
Canberra-based Wade wakes between 5.30am and 6am every day to achieve her vintage vixen look before popping on the bus to her public service job.
But she isn't immune to disparaging comments from time to time.
"I do get people turning around saying 'whose trophy' are you which is quite upsetting," she said.
"I dress like this for myself, I don't dress like this for anyone else. I'm kind of like a vintage-wrapped present to myself."
Like Louey, she believes women need to find something for themselves in the bustle of the every day.
"Women don't take time for themselves. Women have to do that these days otherwise they'll lose themselves within the world," she said.
"That's why I do it, because I want to feel like an important person, even if it's just literally going to the shops and buying milk."
The Miss Pin Up Australia state finals will be held on June 11 before the grand final in Sydney on July 30.
