2010.04.24 The Guardian
When the members of Rylstone and District Women's Institute first published their nude calendar in 1999, unknowingly spawning a fundraising genre (and a film and musical), they were rightly lauded for breaking new ground. There was something defiantly Dunkirk-spirited about an increasingly overlooked, almost invisible section of British society – middle-aged, ordinary-looking, rural women – saying in the most stark terms, "Look at us! Here we are!" and making a staggering £2m for leukaemia research. Their humour and grit was inspiring and the resulting calendar a breath of fresh air in a world where even 17-year-old, size eight models are routinely airbrushed and electronically sculpted to pass muster. But a decade on, we have abandoned what made the original so great and instead opted for a thousand poor imitations – and significantly, featuring only young, nubile women who'd look at home on the pages of Nuts magazine.
The latest is a calendar depicting the "Swags" (an unsavoury term coined by the Daily Mail for our Servicemen's Wives and Girlfriends), naked but for strategically placed tank guns and artillery belts. It's just a bit of fun, it's all for charity, say the women taking part – and their motives for doing so are clearly admirable (though there is something mildly unsettling about staring at scenes that should probably be saved for their partner's next home leave). But are they really necessary?
There is such goodwill towards our troops and their families that on the whole, the British public will consider buying anything for Help for Heroes – people sent X Factor nobodies murdering Mariah Carey to the top of the charts for the very same charity, after all. The debate here is not over whether raising £26,000 (and counting) for our troops is a wonderful thing – it unarguably is – but over whether, whenever times are tough and money must be found, our default reaction as women should be to take off our knickers to help out? It's not really what the Land Girls had in mind.
There is no doubt that the Women's Institute spawned a bit of a monster, and that some naked calendars will always stray into the realms of Nuts-style titillation, which is sad; but on the whole I believe they are a good thing, and, if done right, they can still be inspirational, liberating and fun. The first thing we at H&E Naturist magazine would ask is: what's wrong with getting our knickers off? Does this necessarily have to be seen as degrading? We are constantly striving to normalise nudity in the mind of the general public, and promote the fact that simple nakedness is not crude or rude. Yes, nude calendars are usually highly stylised and include props to cover the so-called naughty bits, and one could argue they're hardly natural – but not all of them feature nubile models or sporting hunks.
A number of charities and organisations around the country are still following the example of the WI and getting their kit off in aid of a good cause, and that includes "real" people, including rugby teams, fire brigades and mothers' unions. I've come across numerous stories about the participants overcoming their inhibitions to be nude among their peers. Nude calendars can certainly still play an important role in helping to address fears about body image.
I'd like to see more natural nudity and fewer silly props. Unfortunately, though, for these calendars to raise any money, they must remain either coy or suggestive, in the mistaken belief that our fully naked bodies are somehow obscene.
I absolutely appreciate the beauty of a woman's naked body and have no problem with nudity in art, allocated public places like a nudist beach or even in some pornography, but the incongruous, kneejerk and ubiquitous use of nude women to raise money for charity does strike me as demeaning. Not to mention, well, naff. The Pirelli calendars of the 80s, these are not. Nor do they show the body in the natural state you describe. We're talking two naked Swags leaning, star-shaped, against a barrack's fence, waiting to be sniff-searched by an alsatian (female handler naked but for a redcap, as befitting rank). July depicts a gaggle of butt-naked girls, their modesty preserved with some bottles of Bacardi Breezer and bafflingly, a teddybear in a rugby shirt and Ray-Bans.
You're right in saying the Swags are far from being the only women to bare all in the name of charity. They're merely following a tried and tested formula that in my opinion, has long since passed its sell-by. Only two weeks ago, BBC stars such as Lucy Benjamin and Julia Bradbury were seen in Cancer Research UK's Give Up Clothes for Good campaign, airbrushed to within an inch, and naked but for some coyly placed hands and carefully splayed Lady GaGa hair extensions. Disaster Housewives, Desperate Librarians, Hotties for Harm Reduction (raising awareness for a syringe exchange programme) – the list of women disrobing in the name of philanthropy is endless (purplemaster.com lists hundreds). And yes, men are at it too (though unsurprisingly, there's no calendar of husbands of British servicewomen), but the images are invariably more playful, less overtly sexual – think Ronan Keating in a Cosmo centrefold, his manhood concealed by a half-pint of Murphy's.
Getting naked to raise money – whether for charity or one's own profit – smacks of desperation. The average community group seems to skip past traditional cake sales and goes straight to the more lucrative business of posing nude with Battenberg slices where their nipples should be. And who am I to begrudge much-needed cash for underfunded causes? But the stark difference between the gently ironic original WI project and the new crop of calendars is that they fly under the radar of what is now commonly accepted as appropriate, simply by virtue of being non-profit. There's little difference between the Swag and Cancer Research pictures, and the kind of car-parts calendars of women wearing only a spanner and a smile, banned from garages and workplaces in the 80s; or the long-gone pub snack displays featuring a woman with a couple of packets of dry roasted peanuts stapled to her mammaries. And yet to object in the same way is to be po‑faced and mean spirited.
I accept that times have changed and no-one's seriously expecting calendars of kittens in a boot to bring in the bucks. But there are plenty of charities of all sizes, making money from simple, inventive ideas . In 2010, the only thing stopping these soft-porn calendars looking as though they're three decades out of date, is the year printed on the cover.
Airbrushed models have taken over the nude calendar in the 21st century, and that is a great shame. Naturists strive to get to a stage where nudity is no longer shocking or offensive to the general public, and it looks like the sheer bombardment of nude (or at least semi-nude) images may actually achieve this. We are nearing saturation point, and the era of the nude calendar may indeed have run its course. If this means that it's no longer seen as a brave or outlandish thing to strip off in public, then I see that as positive. In the same way, the concept of the nude protest is starting to lose its impact too.
Quite a few naturists have produced charity calendars featuring themselves and their friends naked – and I mean completely naked; in our magazine we have, for example, featured a man from Swindon who has raised hundreds of pounds for Action for Blind People through his naturist calendars. One may scoff and ask why anyone would want to display on their walls a bunch of middle-aged, not-all-that-attractive people with it all hanging out, but this surely shows that there is a market for natural, honest nudity, and that the public may indeed be ready to contemplate it.
I accept the argument that "just because it's for charity, doesn't make it right" – for a good example of this, look at Comic Relief and Sport Relief, noble causes whose depressing telethons feature Z-list attention-seekers acting like utter prats.
There is a role for nude calendars in dispelling myths about nudity and body image, but I would like to see them evolve. They should better reflect the people they are supposed to be campaigning for, and I think the public would be more moved to donate if the calendars depicted ordinary people, and not airbrushed models and celebrities.
