Saucy calendar that stripped me of my naked prejudice
Voluntary public nudity is a strange phenomenon. Its keenest devotees always seem to be those who are most familiar with the thousands of natural shocks to which the flesh is heir, rather than ravishing Botticelli beauties or admirable beef cakers.
take naturists, for example, who are almost always grizzled ancients with purple sprouting knick-knackery bursting out of the most unlikely places. or perhaps some misshapen ol’ tufty, shuffling about like a half-finished project from the Build-a-Bear workshop. and the men are just as bad.
then we have nude charity calendars. oh God, are they still a thing? I’m afraid they are. the going-naked-for-charity craze began with the rylstone and District branch of the Women’s Institute in 2000 and went on to conquer the country — but why?
the British are supposed to be a nation of repressed, polite and shy creatures; a people who would take refuge in a cardigan or something showerproof and neatly quilted at the first sign of bad weather or impending orgy.
However, the truth is that given the opportunity to de-breek or de-bra for a good cause, thousands upon thousands of Brits will whip off their pants quicker than Sergeant Wilson could say: ‘Do you really think that’s wise?’
Every year rugby players get their kit off, along with firemen, knitting circles, university students, nurses, butchers, rowers, East Enders actresses, you name it. While they all raise money for good causes, only some calendars are tasteful and well received. others less so.
Six years ago, a ladies’ rugby club from Birmingham published one of the worst ever, showing them posing on pool tables and across sofas in a dingy local pub. It looked like the record of a crime scene, rather than a celebration of life and the female form.
yet each autumn we must once more prepare ourselves for another onslaught of goose pimped calendar nudity. We must get ready for the doughy yeoman buttocks and sun-starved thighs of do-gooders across the land as unimaginative societies strip off for charity.
THEY mean well, of course, although I sometimes think it is much more fun for the exhibitionist participants than those of us who have to shell out for their chosen good cause. Indeed, sometimes I think they should be stopped altogether. Ban this strip filth!
However, this year something special changed my mind. For 2019, there is at least one glorious exception in the field — the Strong Soham Mums Calendar. this incredible publication, unveiled in the Mail yesterday, features cheeky snaps of 12 mothers who have a terrible common bond — they have each lost a child.
the bereaved women live in the Cambridgeshire town of Soham — home of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, the ten-year-olds mur--
dered by school caretaker ian Huntley in 2002. remarkably, Holly’s mother Nicola, 51, is one of the women who posed for the calendar. she wanted to send a message to other mothers — that even though you never get over losing a child, you don’t have to turn your face to the wall for ever.
‘it’s all right to have a laugh,’ she said. she is pictured naked (ish!) with her sister Lesley, 57, who was a huge support during the hunt for Holly, and the terrible years that came after. Now, by a gruesome twist of fate, Lesley is a bereaved mother herself.
On Christmas Eve in 2012, her son thomas, then 23, suffered a fatal head injury while driving home to see his family for the holidays. He died on Christmas Day.
it seems unimaginably cruel that one family should have suffered not one but two of every parent’s worst nightmares. And one set of grandparents had to see two of their grandchildren die in such horrendous circumstances.
Every mother here has a heartbreaking tale to tell, even though they do not dwell on their sorrow. Among their lost loved ones are children who died of cancer, a rare immune condition, a motorbike accident, a brain seizure, at the hands of a drunk driver, the victim of a freak accident. the mothers don’t think soham, with its population of 10,000, has an unusually high child death rate, only that theirs is a close community where everyone knows each other.
it is inspiring that these poor, blighted, bereaved mums have found comfort and strength in the company of each other. some might think it weird to commemorate their wretched connection by posing for a nude charity calendar. And to be honest, it is a tiny bit odd, even if the proceeds are going to the road Victims trust and Addenbrooke’s Charitable trust.
But it is also an inspiring show of strength, a small victory in the war of loss that the bereaved cannot ever win. there is a rare courage in these photographs of ordinary women, somehow coping with the worst life could throw at them, and still managing a smile.
One festive group shot, with the bravest calendar girls draped in strategically placed tinsel, says more than words about the indomitability of the human spirit.
it also shows other suffering mothers that there is life after losing a child. Even though that life may be different and bereft, and often filled with bouts of overwhelming sadness, it is still a life worth living.
And for once, in nude calendar land, that is a message really worth hearing. And seeing.