Calendar Girls

Calendar Girls was Originally Posted on June 27, 2010 by lavarock

I starting watching the middle of a movie and then realized that it was “Calendar Girls”. I had never seen it, but I certainly knew the story.

A few years ago, members of our newly-formed Kona Coffee Farmers Association decided to raise funds while bringing attention to the issue of coffee blends. Not a group to shy away from controversary, the women decided to create a “Calendar Girls” calender, which would feature a number of our farm women raising and processing coffee. The catch is, they would do it without clothes, just like the women in the movie.

Note that this is a real event based upon a movie of a real event.

I thought the idea would not work, and would not raise any money. Of course, I was wrong.

Borders agreed to carry the calendars and was sold out in hours. My local supermarket carried them and sold out soon. I took some to the condos and mentioned them in passing to guests and soon sold out.

The local newspaper and the one on Oahu carried the story. Soon there was a TV news item and an inflight airline magazine did a story on it. Now in each hotel room in Hawaii is a book about the islands and a piece on the calendar. The experience has been truly like the movie.

Some of the girls were at Starbucks and are shown at the bottom of this page: http://konacoffeefarmers.org/KCFA_Event_Photos.asp

Many of the articles were like this one: http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2008/06/20/nude-kona-coffee-farmers-make-their-point-naturally/ and I don’t remember any bad press about it. I did hear a few local comments from people who didn’t think it was appropriate, but when the press and sales were all positive, those comments pretty much disappeared.

I have to admit that it took real guts for them to pose in the nude. Hats off to the women, but when it was suggested the med do the next calendar, I told them I would probably be out of town