About 120 Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students took off their clothes and posed nude with fresh local produce last month. It wasn't Sex Power God and it wasn't the naked donut run - it was the photo shoot for Ripe 2008, the second edition of the Sustainable Food Initiative's fundraising calendar.
"It's beautiful," said Emily Benjamin '08, one of the calendar's three producers and a founder of SuFI three years ago. "And the message that we're sending is really important. We're just trying to highlight the beauty of buying local. We're also trying to highlight the connection between our bodies and what we eat."
The profits from sales of the $15 calendar will go to the Southside Community Land Trust, Farm Fresh Rhode Island and toward the development of the Brown student garden at the corner of Hope and Charlesfield streets.
The calendar was photographed by Lucus Foglia '05 and Kate Abarbanel '06 in List 225. "It was a very comfortable atmosphere," said Nicole Poepping '08, a producer who also modeled for the calendar. "There was a table lined with produce, so after you took your clothes off you were able to look at what would meld with your body and what would look best in the photo," she said.
There was no selection process for the models, Poepping said. Interested students contacted the producers, signed up on the Main Green or responded to outreach efforts made to some athletics teams. Models showed up both in groups and alone. Foglia and Abarbanel did around 90 different shoots over the span of two days, Benjamin said.
The images that made the cut include a couple embracing with raspberries lining the woman's spine, a rear view of four women with lettuce on their heads and a man clutching a variety of colorful winter squash - all nude. Each page also contains a list of produce available locally during the featured month, as well as sexually charged recipes, such as Mushrooms with Mojo or Hot and Steamy String Beans.
The organizers wanted the photos accompanying each month to include produce locally available at that time. "We were scratching for March and April because it's the end of the storage crop season and the beginning of the growing season," Poepping said. "The few things that were happening were morrell mushrooms and asparagus, but we couldn't find mushrooms and we used asparagus" before.
The picture for March is a couple hugging and clutching mushrooms. April is basil on a breast.
SuFI sold the calendars on the Main Green during Parents Weekend. Some students were excited, and others, including some parents, seemed slightly taken aback.
"It's a little on the edge for some people," Poepping said. "It's a little borderline for some parents - it might be awkward for them to have nude pictures of their student's classmates on their wall."
"But they make great gifts," Benjamin added.
The calender was last printed in 2004 for 2005. The 2008 calendars are available at the Brown Bookstore, the Brown Farmer's market and Farmstead Cheeses in Wayland Square. They will also be on sale in the Post Office next week. They can be purchased online at www.farmfreshri.org/ripe.
