I'm a teeny bit miffed....

[GOK]

As some of you know, some friends and I, in conjunction with Lush (the cosmetics company) did a nude calendar to raise money for a charity called Changing Faces, which helps people deal with disfigurement. Because of the nature of the charity, we felt it would be wrong to use Photoshop or similar to make ourselves look perfect, and it took a lot of courage for some of us to bare all (not me, I hasten to add because I am nothing but a brazen hussy!). One girl in particular has severe confidence issues and for her to pose for this calendar was a huge step for her.

The Daily Telegraph wanted to run a feature about the calendar, which was originally supposed to run yesterday. However, it got put back until today and two of the four photos (one of which was mine) that were supposed to be featured were dropped. This was fine by my - I've had my face (and more!) everywhere over the last 25 years - but I was really pleased that my aforementioned chum was getting her picture in the paper. A pic of the calendar cover was supposed to be featured too.

When push came to shove however, the article in the paper was less than complimentary and now this on the website:

Does my bum look big in this calendar?

As more Britons strip off for charity than ever, Jan Moir makes a plea for modesty

In the name of faith, hope and especially charity, will the people of Great Britain please put their clothes back on? This instant. Right now. Without delay. What we mean is, what has got into you all?

This year, the number of individuals willing to pose stark blooming naked for 2007 charity calendars has reached plague-like proportions.

From every corner of the nation, they come a-wobbling in front of the cameras wearing nothing but a frozen smile and a naked desire to do their bit for the charity of their choice.

Good for them, yes? But it means that the rest of us are forced to confront newsagents' racks filled with the kind of sturdy Saxon torsos that were never designed to be viewed in the harsh light of day, except perhaps by pluckier members of the medical profession.

After rootling through acres of untanned and untoned flesh and somehow living to tell the tale, the calendars we feature here – and, in glorious technicolour, on our website – are among the most tasteful and cheerful culled from dozens produced by well-meaning citizens of Britain.

Check out Mr January, standing proud on the battlements of Stirling Castle as the cold, Scottish wind whirls around his ramparts. This is Alex Moffat, the aptly named hooker for Stirling Rugby Football Club, bravely raising funds for the local Strathcarron Hospice.

This is the second year that SRFC has produced a nude charity calendar and, says a club spokesman, there were plenty of volunteers.

"Oh, my God, no. It's harder getting them to keep their clothes on. The boys are always very accommodating. Although we did have to go to the castle this year because we didn't have a club cannon big enough."

Moving south - although not in every way - we encounter a rather more genteel calendar from the enterprising ladies of the Heald Green Theatre Company in Stockport.

They have stripped off to raise funds for the restoration of their theatre, which was damaged in storms last year. Their charming calendar, photographed by theatre chairman Cyril Hines, features a dozen theatre members, aged between 50 and 68, in a variety of refined poses, which they have christened with names such as Fur Coat and No Knickers, The Darling Buds of May and The Passionate Woman.

"The ladies were all a bit shy to start off with but there was no shortage of volunteers," said Mr Hines. Luckily, there was no shortage of cunningly draped pastel fabrics, either.

Meanwhile, our other picks include the firm, fox-hunting thighs of the ladies from the Oakley Hunt, who put their calendar together in aid of Thames Valley and Chiltern air ambulance service.

And workers from the Andover Nursing Home, boldly go where no health worker has gone before, to raise funds for the Alzheimer's Society and Breast Cancer Care. Make ours a large one, please, barmaid – oh thank goodness, she already has.

Those lovely shopkeepers in the small town of Highworth, near Swindon, got together to produce a charming calendar for Macmillan Cancer Support.

The butchers, the bakers and even the Christmas-cake makers from the town's high street grinned and bared it for a very good cause, even if their customers say that buying rock cakes or a pound of sausages is never going to be the same.

Moving out to the countryside, photographer Nicola de Pulford has been taking the shots for the Lady Farmers' calendar for many years. You don't officially have to be a mad cow to offer to pose for her, but it might help.

"All a farmer has to do is ring me up and we will go along and take his or her picture," said de Pulford, who also produces a male version of the calendar featuring the very best of British beef.

"We've been doing this for about seven years now and we sell the calendar all over the world. When I turn up, I've got no idea what the farmer and his wife are going to look like. But there is never any shortage of volunteers. I could fill the calendars for the next few years already."

The craze all started when some members of Rylestone branch of the Women's Institute launched their famous nude calendar to raise proceeds for leukaemia research in 1999.

After WI member Angela Baker's husband, John, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, the Rylestone women became determined to raise money and cheer themselves at the same time.

Their idea was to make a saucy calendar similar to the Pirelli one but featuring themselves and their WI crafts, such as jam- making and baking.

The calendar became a sensation, raising more than £1 million for charity on each side of the Atlantic and the story of how it came to be made was turned into a Hollywood film called Calendar Girls, starring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters.

So far, so good and the original calendar is rereleased every year to great effect. However, it did unwittingly tap into a hitherto unknown urge for normally shy and retiring British people to divest themselves of their outer garments and stampede towards the camera lens like naked lemmings. How did this happen?

For a start, we are supposed to be a nation of sexual repressives with a reputation for emotional froideur and a fondness for nice, warm socks and passion-killer knickers.

Flaunting acres of unabashed nakedness while patting a horse or pouring a glass of wine in a bar – well, come on. Surely that's the kind of thing the French get up to? Not us. Not the country that invented the game of tiddlywinks and thought that a perfectly adequate source of nocturnal thrills, thank you all the same?

Not the country that remains eternally grateful to its former prime minister, John Major, for inventing the original VIP method of keeping warm in winter (Vest In Pants), and whose national devotion to winceyette remains a joke across the rest of Europe?

Well, they can laugh if they like but deep in our national psyche, something wanton is stirring.

The compulsion for even the most rigorously heterosexual British man to dive into a pair of fishnets and a black rubber miniskirt at the first mention of a tarts'n'vicars party is well-documented, if not fully understood, by anthropologists, but now we're taking it one step further.

Over the past few years, British people have queued up to pose for New-York-born artist Spencer Tunick, who specialises in photographing scenes of mass nudity in public places, such as Selfridges in London's Oxford Street, outside the former Saatchi gallery on the banks of the Thames, and on the quayside in Newcastle, where 1,700 Geordies were photographed naked together two years ago.

OK. Fair enough. Good for us. Yet the hardcore nude calendar model knows that there is safety in numbers, almost regarding it as a bit of a cheat.

For them, the only way forward is to let it all hang out, with only the most unsightly of horrors hidden by strategically placed plant pots or similar.

There are more fabulous pictures from these brave and wonderful people on our website, while elsewhere, those of a sensitive disposition are advised that there is no escape from this full-frontal attack.

The nude charity calendar epidemic might make some of you yearn for the traditional blandness of a misty landscape or a saucer-eyed kitten as you look up your next dentist appointment. But as it's all for a good cause you must give, give, give until it hurts. Ouch.

Some of my friends are actually quite upset by this but I'm really a little annoyed about the opening paragraphs. As you scroll down it gets better but most people only read the first few lines. I think it could have been written better - some people are going to get the wrong end of the stick, I fear.

None of us are under any illusions about our bodies - jeebs, I've had three kids and frankly, it shows but we all did this to raise money. As did all the other people in the calendars. Nobody is forced to buy them and I personally have not seen any on sale in shops. The only ones I have seen have been professional ones of beefcake firemen (sorry, models pretending to be firemen) and they certainly aren't for charity.

There is a poll on the site, for which I was going to post a link but considering that there is nudity there (even if it is discreet), if anyone would like to vote for our calendar, please PM me and I'll give you the link.

Another friend at the Times is attempting to run another feature for us. Fingers crossed eh?

 

[Miss_Bella_Hell]

Oh "booo hooo" is what I have to say to this journalist. There is just so much wrong with that article I can't believe it even got published. If she doesn't want a calendar, she doesn't have to buy one!

 

[GOK]

Well as I said, the article gets better but the initial thing that sticks in the mind is that s/he is actually denigrating the calendars, not praising them (which s/he does later on).

However, it's nice to be considered one of the more tasteful and beautiful ones on offer! Shame my friends got so upset...guess they're just not used to the media!

 

[Kim_B]

Well, I for one am impressed that there are so many people willing to "grin and bare it" for a good cause. I certainly don't have the nerve (or the figure) to do it, and if there are people who do, more power to them. Don't like what you see, don't look at it - that's what I say!

 

[GOK]

Here here!

 

[Miss_Bella_Hell]

Well as I said, the article gets better but the initial thing that sticks in the mind is that s/he is actually denigrating the calendars, not praising them (which s/he does later on).

However, it's nice to be considered one of the more tasteful and beautiful ones on offer! Shame my friends got so upset...guess they're just not used to the media!

Hhm, upon a second reading you're right, it's not really all that negative. I just read it as some crotchety old lady moaning about nudity.

"The nude charity calendar epidemic might make some of you yearn for the traditional blandness of a misty landscape or a saucer-eyed kitten as you look up your next dentist appointment. But as it's all for a good cause you must give, give, give until it hurts. Ouch."

Epidemic eh?

 

[GOK]

Those saucer-eyed kittens are generally naked too....the hussies! lol

 

[Paisley]

By definition, doing something daring means that you run some risk. In this case, someone publicly stated her disapproval. In the U.S., some women have lost their jobs for posing nude. In at least some of the cases, the courts said that the employers had the right to terminate them.

Nudes, even Michelangelo's David, aren't my cup of tea. Pictures from England I'd rather see: flowers, castles, and Orlando Bloom (dressed).

 

[GOK]

By definition, doing something daring means that you run some risk. In this case, someone publicly stated her disapproval. In the U.S., some women have lost their jobs for posing nude. In at least some of the cases, the courts said that the employers had the right to terminate them.

How on earth can employers fire someone for doing something in their leisure time that (presumably) has nothing to do with their job? How odd.

And yes, I agree that if you do something daring or out of the ordinary, a certain amount of flak might be expected but my point was that the journalist actually attempted to be humorous at the expense of people's feelings (before saying anything positive). I don't think that is ever acceptable. I also don't think that posing naked is particularly daring. Maybe it is where you are, Paisley but generally speaking, it's not here, neither is it uncommon. A fact that was pointed out at the start of the article. It was only daring on a personal level for some of the 'models', not as an overall project.

Besides, there is absolutely nothing wrong with nudity. The human body is a wonderful thing.

Nudes, even Michelangelo's David, aren't my cup of tea. Pictures from England I'd rather see: flowers, castles, and Orlando Bloom (dressed).

Castles yes, Orlando Bloom - no thanks!

 

[Kim_B]

Maybe it is where you are, Paisley but generally speaking, it's not here, neither is it uncommon. A fact that was pointed out at the start of the article. It was only daring on a personal level for some of the 'models', not as an overall project.

Besides, there is absolutely nothing wrong with nudity. The human body is a wonderful thing.

I think there are a lot of things in the US that aren't necessarily uncommon, but have negative feelings associated with them. A lot (not all, and I'm not trying to speak for any one in particular) of people only associate nudity and posing for portraits nude as a bad or distasteful thing (think porn or 'dirty' magazines). Obviously it all depends on the context of the photos - having seen some of the photos in question regarding the calendar, I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. I agree with you that the human body is a thing of beauty - especially the female form - but that is the photographer in me!

 

[Paisley]

How on earth can employers fire someone for doing something in their leisure time that (presumably) has nothing to do with their job?

Well, statutes vary from state to state. However, when you reach a certain level at a certain type of employer, you are expected to behave in a certain way on and off the clock because you represent your employer. (Same goes with working on certain charitable boards on marrying into an old-guard family.) In the U.S., projecting a professional, authoritative or conservative image is considered imcompatible with posing au natural. The one case I specifically recall is a policewoman who was fired. Another difference between the U.S. and Europe in general is that we hire and fire much more freely here, though not with complete impunity. It's called at-will employment.

 

[Paisley]

I think there are a lot of things in the US that aren't necessarily uncommon, but have negative feelings associated with them [e.g., nudes].

I don't go for Thomas Kincade paintings, sad-eyed clowns or cubism, either. It's all part of the same category for me.

 

[ohairas]

My, this journalist was being quite nasty. It really burns me that media has to airbrush everyone to make them look "perfect" to an almost "non-human" state for publication. So now that when normal folks want to bare all they are "never designed to be viewed in the harsh light of day". It gives people, esp. young people, a false illusion of what people actually look like and I think the virtual mis-use is disgusting. Remember what they did to Kate Winslet's legs on GQ, and recently Katie Courick here in the US? Both of whom were absolutely gorgeous women. I doubt very much that Marilyn Monroe would've been acceptable to Playboy in today's world, and certainly not without some virtual help. Such a shame!

I'm proud of you GOK and all who have helped raise money for good causes.

I have lots of nude artwork that I have not hung up in the house yet because the rooms aren't finished. I don't want my friends and family to be offended when they come over, however it is MY home and it IS art. One such peice is Louis Icart's Venus. Or Mucha's Lady with Bear.

Nikki

 

[VanillaT]

Sounds like a prude to me! Some people can't handle a little bit of humanity. lol

 

[melankomas]

Well, statutes vary from state to state. However, when you reach a certain level at a certain type of employer, you are expected to behave in a certain way on and off the clock because you represent your employer. (Same goes with working on certain charitable boards on marrying into an old-guard family.) In the U.S., projecting a professional, authoritative or conservative image is considered imcompatible with posing au natural. The one case I specifically recall is a policewoman who was fired. Another difference between the U.S. and Europe in general is that we hire and fire much more freely here, though not with complete impunity. It's called at-will employment.

during my military service (at a time i was fortunate enough to be in CONUS), my commander wanted to punish one of my troops for such activity. the proposed punishment, if memory serves, was not a dishonorable discharge, but a severe reduction in rank, withheld pay, and additional duty. i found the prospect ridiculous, but had to fight for a very long time to prevent these things. it was rather silly.

 

[RetroModelSari]

Oh my this sucks! We live in a society were MEdia tries to tell us how to look and how to dress. From the time they are the teenager till they are a mature woman people start to fullfill the picture they see in the media with only perfect people only. Stars try to starve themselves to fit size 0 and are celebrated for it. How dare anyone "normal" show off some skin if he deosn´t look like Nicole Richie or another of those skinny girls? It is important to see there are normal people, too and that those are comfortable with themselves!!!!!!!:rage:

 

[GOK]

Well, statutes vary from state to state. However, when you reach a certain level at a certain type of employer, you are expected to behave in a certain way on and off the clock because you represent your employer.

I can understand that in a way but it is possible to keep the two separate. When I was teaching, I spoke to my board of governors and my Head to get their opinion on my modelling (I was part time teaching, part time modelling) - not one of them voiced any objections but merely said that as long as there was no connection with the school, then all would be fine.

(Same goes with working on certain charitable boards on marrying into an old-guard family.)

I have no idea what an old-guard family is but are you saying that should a person marry someone that is not approved of by their employer or is involved with certain charities, then they can be fired? I'm trying really hard not to cause any offence here but how Big Brother is that?

In the U.S., projecting a professional, authoritative or conservative image is considered imcompatible with posing au natural.

I don't see why they have to be mutually exclusive except perhaps in appearing to be conservative.

The one case I specifically recall is a policewoman who was fired. Another difference between the U.S. and Europe in general is that we hire and fire much more freely here, though not with complete impunity. It's called at-will employment.

All I can say is that I am so glad I live in Europe!

I don't go for Thomas Kincade paintings, sad-eyed clowns or cubism, either. It's all part of the same category for me.

Am with you there, especially vis a vis the clowns. Ewwww! Art-wise, I tend not to go for nudes anyway but that's because I'm far more fond of contemporary work. My home is full of abstract pieces and the only nudes I have are some 1920s photos and my own work.

Sari - well said! :eusa_clap

 

[Miss Neecerie]

Housekeeping note..

Due to the nature of this post, and the desire to discuss it with women here in the Powder Room, the bartenders will be treating it like a lingerie thread.

That is, posts by gentlemen will simply be removed.


Thanks for understanding.

 

[mysterygal]

Coming from a prude

Yes, I agree that the female body is truly beautiful, but I still think there are better ways of supporting causes without baring all.
Women getting fired: In a way I can understand this and another, don't. If, say, she was a CEO of a large company, I can understand letting her go...once a person, man or women reaches a certain level, they carry a huge responsibility of reflecting the company in which they are employed. Take Clinton when he had his little 'rendevous' with that intern...Me and countless others found that scene to be very inappropriate.
While I do admire boldness in women, I do however also truly admire modesty as well.

 

[GOK]

Interesting to note that the gender referred to is female. Is this because we are all women here, or is there some subconscious notion that it is somehow more damaging/wrong/shocking/whatever, for a woman to pose nude (for whatever reason)? Personally speaking, I'd rather see a naked woman than a naked man. Don't get me wrong, men are adorable creatures (usually) but generally, they do look better with their clothes on!

There are, incidentally, two males in our calendar.

MG - of course there are many ways of supporting causes but we did this because it was much more fun than a sponsored race, raffle, or something. And people that buy the calendars (we've sold a few thousand so far) are getting something for their money - something they obviously like, judging by the amount of positive feedback we've received. Granted it may not be to everyone's taste but then you know what they say about not being able to please all of the people all of the time!