I had never heard of the Pirelli calendar until today, when this article was featured on Yahoo. The article is about how, in the past, this collector's item featured nude or mostly nude models almost exclusively. This year, the photos were taken by photojournalist Steve McCurry, who worked at National Geographic and is famous for his photo of the Afghan girl. Although he does use a lot of models in his calendar, he puts a twist on the traditional by having a few photos of everyday people and some without any people in them at all. In addition to this, he photographed supermodel Adriana Lima while she was visibly pregnant (you can see that photo in the article) and said he chose to portray clothed models who give to charity: "I thought, 'Why don't we find models who aren't only gorgeous and beautiful but are also doing good things?'"
I think that, in a world where most calendars that feature models or female athletes (such as dancers or cheerleaders) are hypersexualized, McCurry's vision is refreshing. I also think it's interesting that they normally have photographers like Annie Leibovitz work on the calendar and that a photojournalist is the one who took it in a different direction.
Do you think this year's Pirelli calendar is more empowering to women? Do you think that having calendars with nude or mostly nude women is too commonplace to really hold back women's rights, or is it a problem?
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