ROME (dpa) – The start of the new year is calendar time – but for admirers of the female body, November was already the best time to be in Italy.
That was when, with the new year approaching, scores of Italian magazines and businesses already began unveiling their new calendars. Virtually all feature naked models in provocative poses.
In a country where worship of the female form is challenged only by the idolisation of football players, distributing images of breasts and backsides is a sure way of revving up sales. For aspiring actresses, or for those addicted to the limelight, featuring in a sexy calendar almost guarantees fame and success.
The combination produces a surge of erotic photographs that adorn news stands and billboards across the country. Perhaps most surprising for Catholic Italy, the practice upsets hardly anyone.
The latest protagonist of this sexy calendar fad is Martina Colombari, a former Miss Italy who once made ski champion Alberto Tomba and AC Milan defender Billy Costacurta go weak at the knees.
After losing favour among television viewers – she used to be an assistant TV presenter in several football programmes – she recast herself as a sex bomb and posed naked for a 2002 calendar offered by Panorama, a weekly news magazine.
Now she is once again a favourite target for the gossip papers and Italians can expect her back on TV well before they get a chance to admire January from their office desks.
Martina, of course, is only following in the footsteps of dozens of other knockouts.
Australian model Megan Gale, Croatia’s Nina Moric and Italy’s Elenoir Casalegno are only a few of the pinups who owe much of their popularity to 12 carefully selected shots.
Anna Falchi, a half-Finn-half-Italian whose rear view has made the fortune of an underwear manufacturer, has featured in so many calendars that she has now decided to produce them herself.
“I do them because my fans keep begging me to do a new one each year,” she said, adding that her personal Internet site had received over one million visits since advertising her curves on the net.
In fact, so effective are these bare-all calendars in providing fame in Italy that very few television personalities are now willing to hide their bodies from the cameras.
“I know, everybody does it, but mine is different: none of the pictures have been retouched by a computer, all my imperfections are there,” says Samantha De Grenet, a television presenter who insists that her calendar is so decent that it could adorn any kitchen.
And Italian women’s eagerness to strip appears to encounter no confines. Recently, some 3,000 housewives queued up hoping to feature in a limited edition calendar called “Housewives 2002”.
There are now so many calendars featuring naked women that Pirelli – the godfather of all sexy calendars – has surprised everyone by deciding to keep its pinups dressed for once.
Susanna Torretta was until recently only known as the alleged female lover of Countess Francesca Vacca Augusta, a noblewoman who disappeared in January under mysterious circumstances from her luxurious villa on the Italian Riviera. That is until she bared all.
Just days after featuring naked in a calendar she was being invited to attend political chat shows and asked to discuss the military situation in Afghanistan.
“The truth is that if I hadn’t shown my body, no one would want to hear my opinions,” Torretta argues.
Oddly enough, among the few people who have spoken out against this seemingly uncontrollable proliferation of naked bodies are Italy’s traffic police. They complain that the billboards and posters used to advertise the latest calendar distract drivers and increase the number of road accidents.
