Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

The naked truth: Taking it off for charity is old hat

More and more people - including some around Tampa Bay - are posing without a stitch for fundraising calendars, but some say the stunt has lost its novelty.

By SHARON TUBBS
Published February 5, 2005

	Calendar Girls was based on the true story of a women’s group in England that made a calendar to raise money for leukemia research.
	St. Petersburg College president Carl Kuttler doesn’t find humor in The Men of Seminole calendar, even though it was created to benefit the school.

Seminude calendars with, shall we say, the very imperfect bodies of everyday folks are being used in fundraisers everywhere. One day your neighbor, your dentist, your city commissioner is wearing khakis and a button-down shirt. The next, his bare hairy chest and flabby muscles are highlights in a charity calendar.

It's either a sign that Americans are growing more comfortable with nudity and loosening up a bit, or it's proof of all that can go wrong when people jump on the latest bandwagon.

The calendars show presumably naked, often elderly, people positioned coyly behind objects that hide their most dear gender traits. They have a theme and and title, such as "Backstage Babes," "Naughty Boys of Florida," "Divas and Diamonds." And they sell for roughly $10 to $20 with the proceeds going to everything from school repairs to cancer research.

Elizabeth Bird, an anthropologist and pop culture expert at the University of South Florida, said she has noticed a trend catching on, although she didn't realize just how popular the calendars had become. They appeal to people because they are different from the traditional "stud muffin" calendars with perfect models whom the average person can't relate to.

"I think part of it is just anything new and different, anything that breaks through the same ol' same ol'," Bird said.

Fundraising Ideas & Products Center, an Internet resource directory, now lists nude calendars as a viable money-raising venture, right up there with bricks, greeting cards, stadium cushions, gift wrap and T-shirts.

"A nude calendar is certainly not appropriate for all groups, but there is a growing number of organizations who have determined that they can raise funds with this eye-opening alternative and have a little fun at the same time," reads the site at www.fundraising-ideas.org

One man created the "Nude Calendar Watch" Web site, specifically for calendars of regular people (http://home.earthlink.net/dtaylor404/nudecalendar) It lists more than 130 calendars for 2004 and 2005, and dozens of others going back to 1999. Many were created in the United States; others in Canada and countries abroad.

But as of last week, the list was incomplete. It did not mention at least three 2005 calendars made by groups in the Tampa Bay area, including one that generated money for a church's outreach ministry and another that showed the bare chests of Seminole's city attorney and its four male council members.

The Rotary Club of Seminole Lake sponsored the calendar to raise money for St. Petersburg College. Each month the "Men of Seminole" calendar features scantily clad men posing in their work environments. July shows Seminole council members in a picture that was taken after a meeting last year. The men took off their shirts, donned British-style wigs and ruffled collars and sat behind the council table. Mr. February is a dentist who appears to be wearing only a stark white dental frock. November shows five men holding real estate signs in front of their genitals. A placard atop a Century 21 sign reads, "I'm bigger than I look."

Now, here's where this form of calendar frivolity can go wrong.

The proceeds from the "Men of Seminole" are slated for St. Petersburg College. But college president Carl Kuttler found no humor in it - whatsoever. Reached last week, Kuttler said he had heard of the fundraiser only recently.

"I will tell you that the college can operate without nudity calendars and the money that they raise," Kuttler said.

He had not seen the calendar, but mused that it could spark sexual harassment claims if hung in an office, just like the old pinup calendars popular years back.

Kuttler is not the first to lack enthusiasm for calendar fundraisers. Just this week, officials in Carmel, Calif., rejected $40,000 raised by a group of calendar girls, ages 51 to 85, who call themselves the Carmel Fire Belles. The Belles told the San Francisco Chronicle they've been treated like the girls from a frontier brothel trying to donate brownies to a church bake sale.

In 2003, prominent men in Rappahannock County, Va., made a calendar, their poses "nude but discreet," to raise money for a high school track and football stadium, according to an article in the Fredericksburg, Va., Free Lance-Star. The School Board distanced itself from the project, threatening legal action if the calendar mentioned the board or the high school.

The director of the Association of British Naturist Clubs was quoted in the British newspaper Telegraph as calling the calendar trend "absolutely pathetic."

"They always show people covering up behind cricket stumps or whatever, as if they are ashamed of their nudity," Francis Pickett is quoted as saying. "It's gimmicky, and it gives naturism a bad name. I'd like to see these calendars stopped."

For others, the criticism is less serious. A few newspaper columnists have chided calendarmakers for going overboard. Philadelphia Daily News staffer Dan D. Wiggs wrote this in his Would We Lie? column:

"But we just want to say to the rest of the civilized world: Let's take a break from the cutesie nude calendar thing. We the people have had just about enough of calendars with antiquated human beings hiding their private bits behind other dull objects. In a word: It's just getting old. (Oops. That's four words. Sorry.)"

The phenomenon gained steam with the movies The Full Monty (1997) and Calendar Girls (2003). Both films are about nonmodel types taking off their clothes for a cause. Calendar Girls was based on the true story of a women's group in England that made a calendar to raise money for leukemia research. Members, some in their 40s, 50s and 60s, posed with objects such as hats and teacups hiding their private parts. The calendar was an international success and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.

With that calendar, part of the achievement was that people didn't laugh at the women, said Bird, who grew up in Newcastle, England. "I think there was a lot of admiration that they did this and kind of struck a blow for ordinary people, people who weren't perfect."

Local charity calendars do the same thing, she said. People buy them because they admire the bravery it takes to pose for them.

"People I don't think buy them to laugh at the bodies," Bird said. "They're buying them to cheer them on."

It makes sense, too, that others buy the calendars just to see what their neighbors look like without clothes on, Bird said. It's the same curiosity students might have if their teachers did a nearly nude calendar, she said.

"Of course," Bird said, "I'm sure it would never happen in a high school."

Well, actually . . .

According to a story on the British CBBC Newsround Web site for children, 16 teachers posed in 2003 for a nearly-naked calendar. Their pictures were related to the subjects they taught. A nude music teacher sat as if playing a cello that conveniently hid her feminine parts. Students age 12 and 17 were quoted in the article, saying they were either disturbed or delighted by the calendars.

Bird said teachers in a seminude calendar would be socially acceptable in some parts of Europe, but not the United States.

"It's different over there," she said, adding that nude and clothing optional beaches are more common there than here.

But calendar nudity is steadily seeping into venues where such playfulness once seemed unthinkable.

A group in California created the 2005 "Hotties of Harm Reduction" calendar to raise money for needle exchange programs in the San Francisco Bay Area. The calendar shows volunteers, most of them naked, but discreetly situated with objects such as syringes and condoms. The calendar also lists information and resources to prevent overdoses and decrease drug use.

Here in St. Petersburg, a group of men who strip for charity created the 2005 "Naughty Boys of Florida" calendar for a church outreach ministry that helps battered women's shelters and the homeless. The men range in age from their late-50s to mid 70s.

Kay Wade, the director of communications for King of Peace Metropolitan Community Church, said the calendar was tasteful and the money benefited people helped by the church's outreach ministry. As for the concept of the nearly nude calendar itself, Wade said, "I don't have any particular feelings, positive or negative, about it."

Plenty of people are strongly positive about the calendars, including American nudists who say they are proof of a growing comfort with nakedness.

"As a nudist, I think it's a wonderful thing," said Elf Andersen, marketing director for Lake Como Family Nudist Resort in Land O'Lakes.

"What they do is they bring awareness to these (charitable) causes that they might not otherwise get," Andersen said.

Deb Bowen, marketing director for Paradise Lakes, a clothing optional resort in Lutz, said the calendars bring the nudist lifestyle into the mainstream.

"Typically, the Rotary Club would not be considered partial to nudism," she said. "It kind of legitimizes what we do and makes it okay."

Eileen Navarro never thought of it that way. She's president of the Gulfport Community Players, creators of the 2005 "Backstage Babes" calendar.

The theater group is buying a building for storage and rehearsals, and after seeing Calendar Girls, members figured this was the best way to raise money.

"We're willing to take it all off if that's going to get us closer to our goal," Navarro said.

Each posed nude with stage props, costumes and the like shielding unmentionables. Friends and family members handled the photography, graphics and printing. Several women were worried about scars and varicose veins, but they got over it and had a fun time, Navarro said.

They sold about 400 of the $15 calendars. The months are passing and Navarro still hopes to sell the remaining 600. But if not, she said, the group hasn't lost money because most of the services were donated or at a reduced cost.

She believes they got in on the trend in the nick of time. "If we didn't do it this year, it'll be an idea that's like come and gone," she said.

Bird at USF agreed that this may soon pass.

"I'm sure like any trend the shock or surprise value is there for the first one, then a little less for the next one," she said.

None, she said, will have the international success of the fundraiser portrayed in Calendar Girls. "You can see it working on that local level," she said of recent efforts. "But no one in Portland, Ore., is going to buy that because there's no surprise there. It's just a bunch of old people with their clothes off."

Sharon Tubbs can be reached at 727 892-2253 or at tubbs@sptimes.com

[Last modified February 4, 2005, 11:03:08]