It’s August and you don’t know what you’re in for. It’s time to unveil our next Calendar ladies and you won’t be disappointed.
If you missed any previous amazing Calendar videos made by the one and only Kelli Griggs:
Kelli & Ashley are January/February, Luna & Michelle are March, Julie/Brandy and Stacee are April and May, The Real L Word‘s Francine is June, and Kali from Cali is July.
Some background:
This is Round Three of Autostraddle’s Lesbian Calendar Girls: talented, smart, charismatic, geeky and really-really-good-looking lesbianisty ladies. We make this calendar for you because you all really need to cut it out with your crushes on straight girls, this shit is out of hand, the last thing you need is 12 months of whatever Maxim & FHM come up with. REAL LIVE LESBIANS!
This year we’re going to give you a video every month and just a few teases of what the actual photos will look like, so the Calendar will be chock-full of surprises. Are you excited? WE’RE EXCITED.
Our August ladies are Maya and Brandi:
Maya works as content specialist for a mega-big/fancy Internet company. She holds a BA in Editorial Journalism with an English-Writing minor. She writes poetry, and is currently writing a horror movie (we like). Maya’s ethnicity is Lebanese and she lived in Beirut for five years during the civil war. Eventually her family settled in the U.S. in the south, which Maya will tell you is always fun for coming out as a lesbian! She currently lives in Denver, Colorado.
Brandi was a triple-threat for the Autostraddle Calendar shoot: model, make-up artist AND hairstylist. She’s a Cosmetology graduate of Paul Mitchell, a San Francisco native, a bartender, dancer and talented-as-hell stylist who we much appreciated having for this calendar!
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Here’s Robin & Sara to explain a bit more about this year’s theme:
The 2012 Autostraddle Calendar is our interpretation of the idea of a “lesbian image” without the traditional presentational definers of gender and sexual identity – when we (literally) strip away clothing, what do our naked selves communicate about who we are?
The 2011 calendar was about solo portraits of women who are brilliant, beautiful and courageous on and off camera; 2012 is about the amazing and vibrant community of queer women.
We sought to do something different this year by creating dramatic scenes and having the models interact with each other. We loved the idea of playing with identity in the form of masks, and the power that comes from choosing what to reveal and what to keep hidden.
Be prepared to see lots of skin this year in the 2012 calendar – but remember that it’s what we choose not to show that sometimes gives the most away.
We photographed a group of beautiful and diverse queer women both poolside and on various studio sets in Los Angeles. We’re excited for the monthly Behind the Scenes videos, where Autostraddlers can meet our sexy and inspiring calendar girls. (This being possible thanks to Videographer/Video Editor Kelli Griggs and Music Supervisor Stacee Coleman).
We hope you enjoy meeting the girls as much as we did!
Thanks to all of the amazing stylists, the production team members, and of course our brave and beautiful models.
We hope you love the results and look forward to purchasing your own 2012 calendar later this year in support of the project and of Autostraddle.com.
xoxo
Your devoted producers,
Robin & Sara
(Photographer & Stylist)
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So here it is!
We present the Autostraddle Calendar Girl Behind-the-Scenes video for August:
Special Note: As of December 2010, we request that the comments on Calendar Girls posts, unlike every other post on this site, be exclusively positive. These posts exist to celebrate women, so any shit-talking will get deleted. Direct concerns about the project or website as a whole can be directed to robin at autostraddle dot com or riese at autostraddle dot com!