Aaaarrgh! You know, I mostly like the holidays, making my list and checking it twice and going to the stores (or leafing through the catalogs) secure in the knowledge of what I’m looking for and where to get it, and occasionally springing for a wild-card surprise or two. Ho ho ho! But there is one annual gift quest that brings enough frustration all by itself to supply a whole family of clueless and desperate shoppers. To wit:
The background: Got a dear friend of many years’ standing (whom I will call X because I’m hoping he won’t see this thread): male, heterosexual, liberal, gender-egalitarian, all-around great guy. X would never put a cheesecake calendar (you know, bikini-clad supermodels sprawled on beaches or licking ice cream cones, etc.) up on his wall. Not just because it looks kind of tasteless but because he doesn’t really go for the supermodel type.
What X does go for are fit, cute, athletic, groovy green granola girl types doing outdoor sports (think JillGat without the wedding ring, say). What could be nicer for an outdoorsy single guy to have up on the wall than twelve months of pictures of nature-loving athletic achievers who all just happen to be healthily attractive females? No bare boobs, no thong-flossed butts, no coy crimson kissy lips, no suggestive poses, no damn bikinis and beaches and ice-cream cones, okay? Just decently (though not excessively) clad women going about their business of ascending rockfaces or shooting rapids in a kayak or leaping for a frisbee, with sweat on their foreheads and a few muscles showing. What could be a nicer holiday present from a dear friend than a “sportcake” wall calendar for the new year?
The problem: SO WHERE THE PHUCK ARE THEY??!? Every year I head for the mall and surf the web thinking that this year, someone will surely have caught on to this unfilled niche in the calendar market. And every year, what I find are acres of cheesecake in string bikinis with artfully tousled hair and painted up like a French—er, a French Impressionist. (Sometimes they do have a “sports theme” that’s so girly and artificial it’s pitiful. Aw, look, Miss August is holding three volleyballs, no, sorry, one volleyball, and draping herself around the pole of a beach volleyball net! Oooh, she must be athletic!! Augie, honey, the women X likes to look at could spike your bubbly little Barbie-doll ass three feet into the sand.)
Or else themed sports calendars with mixed pictures of male and female athletes and weird artistic exposures. Or else nature calendars with richly colored magnificent scenery and one tiny human figure of indeterminate shape and sex in the middle distance. Where are the photographic testimonies to women’s achievement? I search for “women achievement wall calendars”: hmm, here’s something—assorted sepia photographs of writers and artists and Babe Didrikson. Try again. Maybe lesbian-themed merchandise would include calendars with strong athletic women? Hey, I don’t care if I get on all the lesbian junk-mail lists, and X sure as hell doesn’t care whether some magnificent Amazon in a calendar photo is gay or not. Search for “lesbians sports wall calendar”—my goodness. :eek: (You know, I think some of that stuff might not really be targeted to a lesbian audience at all!) Try again.
And so it goes. Sometimes I find more or less what I’m looking for (ain’t telling what I found this year, in case X does see this thread), but what I want to know is, why isn’t there lots more of it? Is X really the only guy out there who digs sweaty rock goddesses more than underwear models? Can’t be—“semi-cheesecake” calendars starring female soccer and basketball and rowing champions are said to be flying off the shelves everywhere, and I seriously doubt that all the purchasers are hero-worshipping junior-varsity girls.
So why hasn’t some savvy marketeer figured out how to put together a calendar of serious bodacious sportswomen, call it “Women of Valor” or some such inspiring title, pitch it ostensibly as a celebration of women’s achievement/empowerment/fulfillment, and sit back and watch thousands of dazzled male outdoors buffs pretend to be buying it for their sisters? You like the idea? Be my guest—it’s all yours! Absolutely free! All I want in return is information on how to order one of the calendars, so I can give X his present!
(And then for your second successful marketing venture, you can put together a calendar of serious bodacious sportsmen instead of the silly bodysculpted Ken dolls with marble-sack thong bikinis and moussed hair that you see in the beefcake calendars, so X can give me my present. :))
