KU Tribute

It may not seem a fitting tribute to the basketball team, but we do what we can. Here's some images from the Women of KU calendar over a few years. Interesting to see how the aesthetics of the calendar have developed over the years.

Above is an image from 2002, one of the calendar's first years, when it was still regarded with skepticism and sometimes downright hostility noto nly by the administration, but by some of the student body. Speaking of which, this woman's body is a somewhat traditional representation of an "athletic" woman. The photography in this calendar does not show either her or any of the other women in it to best effect. First, the setting is terrible. Second, she has a really fake smile. Smiles are good, but it looks like she's been holding this one a while. Her posture is really unnatural, too, although it does a good job of making her flex, which might be a plus if you're into body builders.

Here's a more recent image, from 2007 in fact. It's hard to find "historical" pictures from the calendar (if anyone has some they'd like to submit, feel free), so we have to skip a bit. Here we've moved toward a more natural setting, and local, to boot. A much better choice, I think, and the pose here is a little more natural (but still a pose). The composition of the photograph is much better, with a good asymmetry of both color and substance. I like the sunflower/yellow bikini combination. It's a simple trick, but it works. Her expression is not exactly inviting, but that's okay. My main gripe's that she seems a little on the thin side. Nice breasts, good thighs, but her neck seems too taut, and the angle doesn't let us appreciate the curve of her hips.

Here's a picture from the most recent calendar. I picked this because it's very similar in some ways to the picture from 2007, and it better shows the trends in the calendar. The woman who was slightly thin in 2007 has become downright beanpoley, with little in the way of breasts. Skinny arms, skinny legs, tomboyish hair. Not, I think a good direction, but a similar one to the dominant aesthetic, I think, which has been moving increasingly toward androgeny lately, from both sides.

Male models are increasingly thin and teenish, along with movie stars, where Hollywood is trying to move away from the hypermasculine muscled hero to a more lanky teen type. One of our earliest indicators of this, I think, is Kate from Lost, played by Evangeline Lily, a thin, small-chested athletic woman, promoted not simply as a strong woman, but, because women are not allowed to avoid it, as a sex symbol as well, roughly contemporary with the symbolic dumping of Lake Bell's character from Boston Legal for a series of less curvacious lawyers. Or at least so it seems to me.