According to
news sources, thirteen male workers will pose peacefully and very nude for the calendar, covered only with masks or helmets. The staff at the Chaffoteaux et Maury factory in Brittany will use the proceeds gleaned from sales to fund a trip to Italy where they plan to stage a protest at their parent company, Ariston Thermo Group (ATG).
In the words of Brigitte Coadic, representative of the CGT workers union and the woman behind the behinds:
“Our aim is to show there are workers here who will do anything to save their jobs, even take their clothes off. We don't want to destroy anything. We want to show what we can do, tell the management that, if they keep us, we can turn all this media attention into something positive.”
The nude calendar represents the latest in a line of colorful protest stunts by French workers that comes in the wake of threats to blow up factories or pollute the Seine river, as well as the traditional dumping of agricultural produce by angry farmers. It is a peaceful, albeit a bit (a butt) chilly action, that was inspired according to Coadic, by the stylish "Gods of the Stadium" calendar in which the muscular stars of the Paris rugby club
Stade Francais, bare all in an annual display of discreetly lit beefcake.
The nude calendar is far from a new idea and was also carried out successfully by Britain's Calendar Girls; namely, the ladies of the Yorkshire Women's Institute, and the stripping steel workers in the 1997 British film The Full Monty.
So it would seem that when life gives you lemons, by all means think of all different ways to make lemonade, even if in the end the entire matter bears (bares) quite a resemblance to drafty body parts.
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