Naked Women Pocket Calendars: Eroticism In Brazil During the 1970s and 1980s

Memories Of Lost Calendars

As early as childhood, when I was 8 years old, my interest in collecting began to awaken, and the first objects that caught my attention were calendars. But these were no ordinary calendars; they were calendars featuring nude women. It may seem strange in other countries, but in Brazil, pocket calendars with nude women were a form of advertising that most businesses used for their clients. One side of the 7 cm x 5 cm card displayed information about the commercial establishment alongside a calendar showing all the months of the year. On the other side, there was a photo of a semi-nude or completely nude woman. Since fathers would often bring these calendars home, it was inevitable that some would be misplaced and taken to school by boys and teenagers, where they would be shown off or sold to interested classmates. For many boys, who knew little about sex, these calendars represented their first contact with a female form other than that of their mothers. Now that those calendars are lost in time, I think they were my first encounter with the world of eroticism.

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Transformations And Contradictions

In the cultural context of Brazil during the 1970s and 1980s, the use of pocket calendars with nude women was more than just a simple advertising vehicle; it emerged from a social environment full of transformations and contradictions. During this period, the country was ruled by a series of military presidents (1964–1985) who, while censoring political and artistic discourse, allowed a certain freedom in the exploitation of the female body for commercial purposes. This paradox reveals the complexity of the regime’s policies of social control and the selective nature of its censorship, which harshly repressed political and artistic expression but left room for the circulation of products that sexualized the female body, particularly in spaces considered to be of lower cultural prestige, such as advertising and popular entertainment aimed at specific niches like local businesses.

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Brazil was experiencing a deep contradiction between moral conservatism and the commercial appeal of eroticism. While official censorship monitored artistic and cultural works that dealt with politics, customs, or social criticism, there was permissiveness regarding sexuality, especially concerning the exploitation of the representation of the female body. This duality reflected the regime’s ideological control over sensitive topics, while allowing a certain “freedom” in areas that did not directly threaten the regime, such as advertising and mass media.

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Idealized Women

Pocket calendars featuring images of nude women fit into this context of commercial permissiveness, circulating widely in auto repair shops, bars, grocery stores, and other establishments frequented by men. Their function was twofold: on one hand, they served as practical tools for consulting the annual calendar, and on the other, they functioned as objects of desire that reinforced a culture based on eroticism. These images predominantly represented young, white women in a country where the population was largely mixed-race, reinforcing certain beauty standards that, when idealized, became effective tools for using eroticism to attract attention to products and services. It is interesting to note that the origins of the women’s images used in these calendars were uncertain, but given the poses of the models, they were likely selected from foreign men’s magazines. The important thing was to create a calendar that stood out from the rest based on the model and pose chosen.

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Click HERE for the story of the movie porn posters from the 60s and 70s

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