In order to raise funds for whatever reason most people resort to what sells best: sex. This itself usually takes two forms, bikini car wash or, especially for older people, the sexy workplace calendar.
Sometimes it is implied that this is going to happen, but a PG calendar is made instead to subvert expectations. Common people to feature in these calendars are the Hot Librarian, Smoking Fireman, Good-Looking Privates, Hot Men at Work, and Naughty Nurse. When the models are truly nude or nearly nude, there will be a lot of Scenery Censors.
It's a costume strip show in calendar form, basically, produced to raise money for the business. Month themes are also common, and may replace the work theme the models have.
Whilst the idea is international, British works will likely only use it as an homage to the real life "Calendar Girls", and include the models standing around a piano with one sitting on the bench and/or sunflowers. The trope is not Always Female, and may actually be more commonly done with men. It may be either Fanservice or Fan Disservice.
Compare Hey, Let's Put on a Show.
Examples:
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Advertising
- One Progressive ad had the rival insurance company show Flo the bonus they give customers: a calendar with insurance men in sexy posts.
Rival Insurance Man: You should see November!
Flo: [flirty] Oh yeah?
Comic Books
- Shows up in a Donald Duck comic by Don Rosa, of all things. Scrooge looks through the trash Donald is about to throw out after cleaning out the office, and picks up a calendar which gets him... excited. Donald, surprised at his normally chaste uncle's reaction, asks to see, only to find that it depicts the most beautiful banks in the world.
- Dogs of C-Kennel: An attempt to create a pin-up calendar called "The Hunks of C-Kennel" turns out to be a bad idea: Iggy is too camera shy, Kenny can't sit still long enough, and Will won't stop making obscene gestures when he's being photographed.
Comic Strips
- Luann: The fire station decides to do a "sexy firefighters" calendar to raise money. Toni is on the cover, but she's the only female firefighter to pose, leading to some straight men being disappointed that it's all dudes. It proves popular with gay men, though.
Fan Works
- In Calendar Boys
, the Shinigami Women's Association agree to create a calendar full of the various men around the Soul Society to raise money.
- In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, after Mr. Goodshow injured himself, several of the Gym Leaders and Elite Four members put a swimsuit calender together for him as a get better present. Only three copies were made, with Goodshow having one of them and Erika receiving the second as a bribe from Lorelei.
- In Sword Art Online Abridged, guild leader Heathcliff ends up the prisoner of the so-called King of Ashes, the sadistic tyrant who took over Floor 75. But Heathcliff is eventually able to negotiate both his freedom and passage through the Floor so they can fight its raid boss, by promising to send the King some pictures of Asuna. All of this takes place offscreen, and is related through brief shots of in-game newspapers and e-mails.
Heathcliff's Message: Apparently they're preparing some kind of charity calendar for cancer research once we get out of here or something. Look, they've promised me it's all going to be very tasteful. Minor sideboob at most. [...] P.S. What is your thong size? It's for the calendar.
- Things I Am Not Allowed to Do at the PPC:
89. Creating a swimsuit calendar for the PPC by superimposing Mary Sues over the Flowers is not funny.
Film — Live-Action
- The film Calendar Girls was made about the true story of the so-called "calendar girls". They were members of the Women's Institute (groups providing opportunities for women and hosting fundraising) in Yorkshire who made the nude calendar for leukaemia research in The '90s. It was also adapted into a stage play.
Literature
- In the Secret World Chronicle by Mercedes Lackey, Belladonna Blues is assumed to be a Brainless Beauty by some villains because she once posed for a fundraising calendar featuring superpowered healers. She uses this to be beneath their notice while running a conspiracy against them.
Live-Action TV
- Arrested Development: One of Lindsay's charity efforts involved posing for a "Ladies for Literacy" calendar (read: she had a photo taken of her with nothing covering her save for a copy of Oliver Twist). It got a lot of middle-school boys interested in "books", but it had the side effect of nobody in the family wanting to look at the calendar anymore.
- Referenced in Criminal Minds. In a flashback to when Garcia first met Morgan (she's actually under investigation for hacking at the time), she says "Hey, when they do a Men of the FBI calendar is it just 12 pages of you?"
- In The Drew Carey Show, such a calendar is mentioned in passing when Oswald agrees to have Lewis' workplace, DrugCo, give him breast implants. He says the pay is good, and he'd even get more if he poses for the DrugCo calendar. He does.
- In Burn Notice, Fiona once pitches herself to a demolitions foreman as a talent scout for a company that makes the calendars, saying she's doing one on "the men of demolition." Actually she's getting photos of his employees so Michael can ID the guy who tried to blow him up two episodes earlier.
- Castle:
- Detective Esposito claims to have been in the NYPD calendar at one point.
- In "The Third Man" Lanie sets Beckett up with a firefighter friend who was June on the FDNY calendar.
Beckett: They always put the really hot ones in the summer months. - One episode of Saved by the Bell has Zack shoot one of these to raise money for the school using the girls' swim team...without their consent. He ends up getting into trouble for that. On a side note, the swim team only has eleven members, so December is Jessie's body with Mr. Belding's head superimposed.
- One episode of The IT Crowd sees Roy putting together a sexy calendar for charity (and to win a date with one of the calendar girls.) Over time, the calendar morphs from a regular sexy calendar to a calendar filled with old ladies, to a calendar filled with nerdy men.
Web Video
- Ryan George's "The First Guy to Ever Be a Firefighter" video ends with the victim of the fire telling the firefighter to take his shirt off before putting out the fire, saying, "You're gonna be a genre of calendar, I've decided," much to the new firefighter's total confusion.
Western Animation
- Futurama, "Neutopia:" In order to keep Planet Express afloat the Professor decides to put out a "Girls of Planet Express' calendar to raise money. The female employees aren't interested and are offended, but after an alien switches the Planet Express male and female sexes the now female (formerly male) Planet Express employees enthusiastically put together the calendar.
- In The Simpsons episode "The Devil Wears Nada", some of the Springfield wives pose for a history themed "sexy" calendar. The end results is Marge being the one on all pages of the calendar thanks to the red wine the photographer gave her to help her loosen up to show more skin.
Real Life
- The "original" calendar girls as mentioned. If not some of the first to use the idea, they were certainly the first to use natural poses while nude. This added to the novelty, of course, and the humor. The Women's Institute women (they were mostly middle-aged to older women) performed traditional WI activities, like cleaning, but naked.
