ausauto News Article

Pirelli calendar a blast from the past

It's that time of the year when a famous calendar featuring naked and near naked females hits the headlines.

But it will take a very brave-or very foolish-retail tyre outlet to put the latest 'tastefully photographed' almanac up in the customer service area. Not that many local outlets are likely to receive a copy of the latest Pirelli calendar.

However, for customers that get off on soft porn, the 2010 calendar is a 'bottler' featuring 30 images shot in Brazil of near-anorexic young females eating bananas, riding a water buffalo and pouring sap from a rubber tree over their bodies...as you do!

According to Pirelli, American photographer Terry Richardson's 'straightforward' style of photography depicts "the sunny side of femininity" by portraying "figures without frills, removed from complicated and artificial contexts set by fashion trends."

If that sounds like a load of you-know-what, then get this from tattooed Terry: "My technique is the absence of technique. The lens is my eye, my charisma, my ability to capture moments of truth, whatever they may be, picture angles, use of color, light, scenery-these have always been the essential aspects of my photographic art." [as has modesty].

Pirelli reckons that the calendar represents a "return to the natural, authentic atmospheres and images of the 1960s and 1970s" which opponents will no doubt claim is where the company's outdated values still reside.

And those critics could be right on the money. 

Over the past decade, most retail tyre outlets and the auto repair industry in general, have worked hard on improving their image especially when it comes to not offending the all-important female customer.

The days of greasy Joe's Auto complete with girlie posters has been consigned to the dustbin of time, but by all accounts the new Pirelli calendar could help bring back the 'images of the 1960s and 1970s'.

Let's hope not.

Take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-v0ogNJ0ys and make up your own mind. And they say on television: "This program contains nudity, and a language we can't speak"