Keeping Up With The Calendar Girls

Pretty girls on calendar pages have been around since the 40's. In the 70's, every car mechanic had a calendar on the wall with a gal splayed out over a classic car or motorcycle. Sex sells. Especially calendars.

The 90's brought us equal treatment with the Chippendale calendars. These gorgeous scantily clad men covered the walls of most single girls' apartments. I had one friend who bought one each year for her aged grandma in a nursing home. She said that her grandma got really good care because all the nurses wanted to come by and check out the eye candy.

Lots of municipal fire departments and police have made beefcake calendars as fundraisers. There have even been a couple of films about some older women in England who did it to raise money for their local hospital.

Beautiful women have actually gotten into the business of selling themselves as calendar girls. One of the "Girls Next Door" Holly Madison does a calendar each year. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that celebrity Kim Kardashian did a calendar for 2011.

But she did two.

She did one calendar shoot as her beautiful brunette self and one as a streaky blond. That's right, she had a blond wig and did a whole photo shoot of herself as a blond. So she's got TWO calendars to sell--one if you like blonds and one if you like brunettes.

I actually can't decide how I feel about this. She's either greedy or a marketing genius. I'm not sure which. What I am sure is that the calendars will sell and make her a lot of money. Which I hope she's investing and putting away for when she's no longer young and beautiful.

People of all types appreciate beauty. As long as there are pretty girls and boys, there are going to be calendars with full color, glossy photos of them in swimsuits and less. Some are art, some are tacky. But they all give us something to look at when we schedule our busy lives.

I tend to like the ones that raise money for causes. I don't need kittens or puppies, but I always buy a couple of calendars to have around the house. I've tormented myself with lovely beach scenes depicting places I'll never have enough money to visit. I've looked at gorgeous mountain scenes of places I will never hike to or look at personally. That's no different that looking at the greased body of some person who would never give me the time of day, is it?

--Sandee Wagner