Warwick University rowing club women's team calendar

Women presenting their bodies for male consumption is not exploiting men in any way, whether they are students or not. This is no different to what is said about page 3 or porn and equally wrong.

oh come on, they're STUDENTS!!!

let them have some fun, and exploit some lecherous blokes in the process to raise some cash for charity.

I've never bought a nude calendar, and I'll not be buying this one, but let them have their fun!

Phaser I don't think black people have reclaimed that word in the sense of diminishing the racism underlying its use by white people. I don't believe any women can lessen the grip that advertising and porn have on nude, sexualised images so long as the advertising and porn continues. In fact, I think they give support to those industries who can point to calendars like this and say "look, these women are doing it themselves which is no different to what we do". We hear this argument whenever page 3, lads mags, porn or similar issues are raised.

The idea of nude calendars is so old-fashioned. What the heck is the point of them. Yes, you've got a body and you're naked. So what?

Can young, educated, wealthy white women do something to lessen the grip that the advertising and porn industries on nude, sexualised body images through images such as these?

Sadly I doubt it. The reaction of the lads is likely to just be the same 'phwoar'. They'll look at these young ladies in the lecture theatre and be thinking 'yeah, I would'. Doesn't seem like it will 'reclaim the nude' to me.

Agree that that is a good aspiration phasar, but the trouble is it so often seduces people into images that in fact, even if not in intention, are doing the opposite, so it disguises the continuation of exploitative sexualisation.

It must be possible to "reclaim the nude" in this way. Really good efforts can and do succeed. But the trouble is that most of the efforts we see are not really as principled as they claim, or are poorly executed, or (sadly I guess this is common) are very well and sincerely done but operating as someone said upthread in an atmosphere where female imagery is just too poisoned to be reclaimed. It doesn't do to be too defeatist, though, I suppose, which is why I wanted to be able to see this warwick calendar as ok. I can't really decide if it is or not.

What if women 'reclaim' the nude image, as has happened with black people and the word 'nigger'. Can young, educated, wealthy white women do something to lessen the grip that the advertising and porn industries on nude, sexualised body images through images such as these?

Skepchick's point number 1, what she said, I agree with. In fact to repeat:

Regardless of the intent behind the calendars, regardless of how much fun we had making them, regardless of how empowering we found them, regardless of the racial and age diversity we showcased, and regardless of the fact that they were run by a woman and benefited women, pin-up calendars added to an existing environment in which women were seen first as sexual objects and maybe if they’re lucky they’d later be seen as human beings with thoughts and desires of their own. Back in 2005, I thought skeptics weren't affected by the patriarchy and that misogyny was something left to the religious. In a community like that, a pin-up calendar of women would be absolutely fine. I learned that a community like that does not exist and it was naive of me to assume otherwise.

(If they were being pictured as scientists, rather than rowers, I would certainly regard the pictures as demeaning and trivialising of the subjects and would hate the pictures unambivalently. But there is a slightly stupid physicalism about the image of rowing as such, which the pictures take further. In other arenas, the stupid physicalism of picturing naked bodies would be a damaging imposition, inextricable from sexism, which would seem to thwart women's efforts to be taken seriously.)

I have mixed feelings about this, like a lot of you. But I think that the back-story of pictures like this is a lot to to do with the recent fashion for mass naked pics as a kind of performance art, rather than striving to be a so-called ironic post-exploitative take on porn and porn-influenced images.

If the women were older, their bodies more sharply differentiated from a sexual ideal, then we might enjoy the images more easily, we might feel less anxious about their possibly faux-ironic, exploitative status. But does that amount to saying that if you happen to be young and fit and beautiful, then that in itself traps you with a sexualised perception of images of your body, regardless of context and intent? That you have to be old and unattractive before you can feel free of that? That seems perhaps a bit unfair on the beautiful!

I don't particularly admire the images, I don't think they are powerfully ironic, or deconstructive of sexualisation, or anything grand like that, and they are unoriginal too. But on the other hand, I think they look quite nice. They are entertaining and positive pics to have on the wall. I think.

Sorry, missed this bit off.

So please, organizations and people I love and support: find something new to do. If you want to make women in science more visible, put them somewhere people are looking. If you want to show the diversity of atheist women, you don’t need to make them take off their clothes. If you want to be revolutionary, come up with a new idea that no one else has thought of yet.

Maybe one of those novelty pens where when you tip it upside down, the lady’s reliance upon appearance-based self-worth falls off.

Another 'Calendar Girls' nude calendar. Yawn.

Some other current examples of these calendars:

'Barely There' - (mixed) vetinary students calendar
Cardiff uni students (women) for Brain Tumor Charity
Oxford Uni rugby club (men) for prostate cancer
Notts Uni polo club (just women?) for British Heart Foundation
UCLU and UCL (women) for Anthony Nolan
Leeds Uni Equestrian Soc (women) for Ride for the Disabled
Warwick Uni rowers (men) promoting themselves
Bristol Uni netballers (women) for rehabilitation of service personnel
Newcastle Uni boat club (mixed) promoting themselves
University of East Anglia (women) for CoppaFeel (apparently a breast cancer charity)
Exeter Uni Polo Club (mixed) Riding for the Disabled
Durham Uni rugby club (men) to fund their Australian tour
Also: female scientists, atheists, West Highland Terrier Rescue club (mixed sexes, mixed ages; that was quite a good one actually).

Why these calendars aren't funny/original/edgy any more:

Excuse the cut and paste from this women in science blog:
skepchick.org/2012/09/please-stop-making-calendars/

1. Regardless of the intent behind the calendars, regardless of how much fun we had making them, regardless of how empowering we found them, regardless of the racial and age diversity we showcased, and regardless of the fact that they were run by a woman and benefited women, pin-up calendars added to an existing environment in which women were seen first as sexual objects and maybe if they’re lucky they’d later be seen as human beings with thoughts and desires of their own. Back in 2005, I thought skeptics weren't affected by the patriarchy and that misogyny was something left to the religious. In a community like that, a pin-up calendar of women would be absolutely fine. I learned that a community like that does not exist and it was naive of me to assume otherwise.

1. Adding a calendar of men did not balance out the calendar of women. In a perfect non-patriarchal world, it would, but what I realized was that the women in the calendars were not being seen in the same way as the men in the calendars. The women were objectified on a level unmatched by those viewing and commenting on the men. This was something difficult for me to objectively evaluate at the time and was just a hunch based on my casual observations, but that hunch was confirmed last year when I had shitlord after shitlord emailing me to tell me that I have no right to complain about being groped or propositioned at conferences because I posed in a calendar for skeptics (see my filthy slut photo as the featured image on this post). If Phil Plait ever complains about a woman grabbing his crotch at a conference, I’m confident that no one will forward him his entry in the 2007 “Skepdude” Calendar and tell him to stop being such a whore if he doesn’t want that kind of attention.

1. No one uses calendars. Okay, admittedly I can name three people I know who continue to take out a pen and write things down on a paper calendar. Every other person I know uses something on their phone and/or computer to keep track of appointments and tell what day it is. I have a calendar hanging in my office – it’s the nude revolutionary calendar, and I have it hanging up because I love the people who made it and want to show support, even though I forget it’s there and have to flip over two months each time I remember it.

1. Here’s the most important one for all the organizations currently considering making a calendar: calendars, and particularly nude calendars, are in no way edgy, interesting, or clever. Everyone has done it, including ambulance drivers, humane societies, rowing clubs, the staff of Marks & Spencer, Mormons, and two different coffin-makers. And as my list near the top of this post indicates, it’s not even special in our niche. There is now an abundance of skeptic, atheist, geek, and scientist calendars.

Buffy, I would say your middle paragraph shows that you aren't missing anything--you even say that the comments (which I shall not read) show that others clearly get the point too, and not in a nice way. I think that more than cancels out what you say in the last paragraph. Basically I claim displays of naked women are too culturally poisoned to be a positive thing, even if there are individual incidents which are innocent. It would be nice to think that doing it right would be an antidote to doing it wrong, but as things stand now, I don't think that can happen.

feminists aren't anti-nudity only dorks think that

well some of the feminists at Warwick Uni obviously are. Please Read the article.

It's also possible, looking at the picture, that they weren't nude at all. they could have all been wearing strapless swimsuits.

they were 100% naked, the video on the Daily Mail link i posted above confirms this.

It's also possible, looking at the picture, that they weren't nude at all. they could have all been wearing strapless swimsuits.

Im pretty sure they originally had a mixed nude calendar at warwick. If it had been bimbo sex shots naked or not it might have been worth complaining about but worried about the posters here who see sex and porn wherever there is nudity.

There is the element of participant bravery and commitment here as well as the novelty. . and with the kind of porn available these days id be highly surprised if anyone was made 'glimpse of stocking' rabid by these pictures.

They seem like great nudes to me as do the equivalent male pictures.

I'm afraid that even when it's not actually pornographic and even if it's being done for some reason other than financial desperation, I can never see women taking their clothes off in front of a camera as anything but exploitation. It just picks up on the pornographic motif, and when they say "but this is all for fun and showing off our athletically toned bodies" all I can think of is that we're just so used to naked women being out there in front of the camera or the easel, usually with a man behind it, that there's no way it can be done so as to be innocent. Just possibly, if they had women and men mixed up together and all equally exposed and looking like best friends, then it could be OK. The idea that women's and men's bodies could be of equal value and equally attractive, there's something innovative and maybe valuable there. But just more young women naked, no thanks.

On a quick glance through Flora's link I would say that 4/10 of the female athletes were in overtly sexualised poses. I wouldn't say any of the men were.

Sorry, FloraFox, I really did not mean to be confrontational. It's just that the public appearance of an unadulterated nude female form is so rare these days, that the sight of some rather artfully presented fetching naked bums makes me rather giddy. And I've not seen any other similar calendars before (except the original Calendar Girls), so there is a novelty factor in this for me.

I'm surprised this is news.

Durham Unversity Rowing Club did exactly this years ago.

And many organisations, featuring both men and women, have done nude calendars since the WI hit the headlines for it. It may be a tired format, with it's own cliches, but it's far better than porn industry nudes.

poor old lib, every conceivably way that he can gaze at naked women is being thwarted....

Autumn I don't want to derail the thread. I would agree with it being "many" rather than "some" that are passive and sexy. The Julie Chu, Suzy Hotrod and Sylvia Fowles are not though.

I am honestly struggling to analyse this theoretically. But my emotional reaction was that the photos were beautiful and the young women in them were beautiful too. The setting was natural and they were photographed engaged in their sporting activity as they normally do. They are healthy and happy, their bodies are not photoshopped so we are indeed celebrating the real human form.

FloraFox, sorry, but I found that many images of women in the collection in your link were extremely sexualised. I found them inappropriate in a sporting context. The images of women who were not were photos of what looked like top athletes, whose bodies are sculpted by their sport to the extreme. I'm afraid the "form" of the women in Warwick is a bit more like an average young woman in this country.

"Some people might see these things as celebrations of human athletic physiques."

They're not though, most of the pictures have the women coyly covering their breasts or genitals. These pictures celebrate human athletic physiques:

espn.go.com/espn/photos/gallery/_/id/8146596/bodies-want-2011

But even here, some of the women's pictures are passive, reclining sexy shots.

The calendar does, of course, objectify women and is anti-feminist.