The conservative pin-up calendar is harmless kitsch, not pornography
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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In the dumbest possible online nontroversy that has been branded #Calendargate, a handful of conservatives — and disproportionately, conservative women — are apoplectic over a calendar featuring photoshoots of various right-wing bloggers and “influencers.” Meant to lampoon the leftist notions that men can be women and that anorexia and obesity are considered beautiful by Hollywood and the corporate media, the “Real Women of America” 2024 calendar operates as one-part pin-up and another a (not so subtle) advertisement for the creator, “Conservative Dad,” and his Ultra Right Beer.
It is kitschy. The photo shoots boast a relatively low production value, and the aesthetic is certainly catering a working class sensibility, not the world of high fashion or museum curation. But the calendar itself is anodyne and innocuous at worst and a fine celebration of real, conservative women of all races and healthy, attractive body types. It’s PG-13 and tolerably cringe, but pin-ups are neither meant to be high art, nor pornography. The most scantily dressed model is the bikini-clad cover star, Riley Gaines, who literally became a conservative celebrity as a collegiate swimmer who competed against biological male Lia Thomas, and the rest of the models are fully clothed.
That hasn’t stopped yet another right-wing outrage cycle.
For starters, the calendar doesn’t feature the models’ children because pimping out your children’s faces for social media clout is something only terminally online, wannabee e-girls do. Most actual conservatives recognize that turning your children into the next generation of Kardashians for clicks borders on exploitation. Secondly, a celebration of “real women” absolutely includes a recognition of our sex appeal and beauty that no man can co-opt, regardless of his pronouns or hormones.
Saluting a woman’s feminine wiles, of course, does not mean publishing outright pornography, but to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stevens, we know what fits the definition of porn when we see it, and a decorated swimmer wearing a bikini certainly is not it.
Furthermore, conservatives are close to winning the argument that the slippery slope, in some crucial cases related to obscenity, has proven potent. Seeing the corrosive consequences of porn consumption by minors, Virginia’s purple legislature succeeded in sending a bill requiring age verification on porn sites to the desk of Governor Glenn Youngkin, who signed it into law. Spearheaded by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, parents have successfully pushed school districts to remove actual pornographic materials from K-12 curriculums.
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These arguments — as well as the movement opposing trans women encroaching on women’s spaces — are undercut when harmless pin-up pictorials are equated with literal pornography and fellow conservative women shame, not salute, the beauty of other real women. From a public relations perspective, #Calendargate is a dud for the conservative movement, and on a personal level, it reeks of simple internalized sexism, as though women’s bodies should be shrouded rather than celebrated.