Tallahassee is buzzing about not one but two local fundraising calendars featuring nearly nude business owners. The reaction to the Ten Speed Greens and Gaines Street Fest calendars has been largely positive, but some critics are saying the images are indecent or they objectify women.
Claire Mitchell and Danielle Krasniqi were owners of the now-defunct Ten Speed Greens urban farm. Now, Mitchell says they’re selling "artsy, tasteful" calendars, postcards and posters through an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign to help pay for Tallahassee land so they can make a comeback.
“We have had people say that this is just using the female form to make money,” Mitchell says.
With the help of a story on the front page of The Huffington Post, the pair have gotten international attention and raised more than $14,000 dollars with more than two weeks left in the online campaign. Their original goal was to raise $4,000 to invest in their business.
They call it the Farmer Tans calendar. In a (not safe for work) promotional video, Mitchell, Krasniqi and their friends pose nude with strategically placed fruits and vegetables at the farm on Tallahassee’s Sixth Avenue. Mitchell says she’s personally featured alongside strawberries and in a shot with little more than honey bees.
“There’s one of the pictures where there was one right on my leg or something—they were all over, and I was holding flowers too, so I was attracting them even more,” she says. “So it could have been worse.”
She says the shoot ended without a sting. But the same can’t be said of the campaign, which she says has attracted critics who say it exploits women. Mitchell contends that couldn’t be less true.
“We’re celebrating our bodies as not only objects of beauty with these fruits and vegetables, but we work with these bodies every day. We work outside physically. And it’s because of these bodies we were successful,” she says. At its peak, the farm sold to more than a dozen restaurants and nearly three dozen subscribing members. Although its success exceeded its owners’ expectations, Ten Speed Greens closed this summer partly because its landlord planned to sell the property.
The Ten-Speed Greens fundraising campaign is gaining attention at the same time another local nude calendar is getting pushback. After the Tallahassee Democrat recently ran a story on a similar campaign raising money for the Gaines Street Fest, reader complaints poured in about a skin-baring photo accompanying the story.
Gaines Street Pies pizza shop owner Jeremy Matlow and his staff posed for a comic-book-themed photo in the Fest calendar. He says he disagrees with critics who have called the shots pornography.
“I took it a little personal,” Matlow says. “I was like, ‘Hey, we’re just trying to have fun here. We’re trying to have a music festival. And you’re distorting what we’re trying to do, and I know you might not understand it or you’re from a different generation, but we’re just trying to have a music festival and promote it.’”
Matlow says the controversial calendars have been a better fundraiser than previous efforts that didn’t involve stripping down for the cause. And they’ll be available at Gaines Street Fest itself on Oct. 11.
