Calendar girl
Birthday suit: Comedian Amy Schumer is one of the 2016 Pirelli Calendar models.
MANILA, Philippines – It was all over my feed like some sort of epidemic — Amy Schumer and Serena Williams posing topless! OMG! Women empowerment! — a collective cry arose from friends and my followed media outlets. Intrigued, I decided to look into the source of all the raving: the 2016 Pirelli calendar, shot by photographer Annie Leibovitz.
The concept is simple, but packs a punch. Leibovitz gathers some of the brightest women of our generation — Tavi Gevinson, Fran Lebowitz, the aforementioned Schumer and Williams — and photographs them for a calendar often seen as “high-end porn for classy businessmen.” It’s a space for both model and medium to incite admiration and in some ways, even aspiration.
The 2016 edition seems to join the ranks of countless moves that ride an emerging wave of female-positive branding. Take Nike’s “Better For It” commercial, an honest tribute to any gal who’s ever hit the gym. Or the next installment of Ghostbusters, which features a predominantly female cast. Refreshing as it is, one can’t help but wonder what lurks beneath the surface.
It’s been said that you can tell a lot about a culture by what it makes. If that’s the case, then what does the Pirelli calendar tell us about today’s society? And if the change is only for one edition, what does it say for future editions?
Match point: Tennis star Serena Williams is featured in the nude for the new Pirelli Calendar.
A New York Times piece on the calendar gushed that it “signaled a cultural shift. ”Looking at how the calendar has been angled — and the company responsible for it — it’s an assumption that isn’t hard to believe. Originally meant as a limited-edition giveaway to loyal customers and important VIPs, the calendar served a largely economic function. If you wanted to “get with the big guys,” after all, you needed to build male ties; and what a better way to do that than to give them something of reasonable scarcity? Being a tire manufacturer in the 1960s, Pirelli seemed to know its audience and gifted them with what seemed fitting then — a pin-up calendar.
Then, after a period of no production, the calendar reappeared with its “art nude” incarnations, and with some of the hottest female personae. An article by The Guardian notes how the turn seemed to come about with the rise of unhealthy body issues, further strengthening the link between the times and the creation.
With the 2016 edition reveal, then, a lot of questions come to the fore. For instance, although it might be easy to say the calendar’s vision is purely Leibovitzian, let’s not forget that she also shot Pirelli’s 2000 edition — a marked difference from her latest work, with its contorted nude models. Peter Lindbergh’s 2002 shoot and Steve McCurry’s 2013 work are also notable exceptions, being early versions that don’t pose their models in the nude.
In the end, perhaps it all boils down to the question of demand — one that has jumpstarted Pirelli’s calendar journey, and one that continues to guide it. One that asks: what does my audience need?
With the latest edition, the answer seems to be clear as day. Living in a time where gender issues and women’s rights are go-to topics of discussion, women are again reappraising their roles as important figures in society, be it in the workplace, the government or on the streets. And, economically speaking, their importance in the consumer society has also been elevated, with countless products targeted towards them.
No doubt this will change for future editions, but all things considered, it’s not hard to see where Pirelli’s change of heart (and vision) comes from. As women — and more importantly, as people — we recognize the need for something that is real, something that caters to our day-to-day struggles. It’s probably the same formula that makes certain events and individuals such hot topics. And right now, we don’t need imploded visions of who we are, but who we are exactly — and, most importantly, who we want to be.
