I left my apartment the other morning and found the latest edition of the illustrious Tempe12 calendar laying at my Vista del Sol doorstep. I hadn’t ordered it. I looked up and down the hall, I saw that all my neighbors had received a calendar as well.
A few doors down, a couple of male ASU students stood in their doorway, calendar agape, poring over the next few months, jabbing their fingers against the pages and snickering.
One of them gave me a nod. “It’s a whole new year,” he smiled.
I can’t join him in his excitement. Something way down in my moral fiber forbids me to — there’s a lot about Tempe12 which makes me shake my head and feel like something has gone horribly wrong.
How do these women end up embodying a month in the most widely disseminated school year calendar at ASU? According to its founder, David Freedman, in an article The State Press ran in September, “The group of 12 women is chosen to be a part of the business based on both ‘beauty and brains.’”
Let’s explore the 12’s definition of “beauty.” Small bikinis dominate these women’s attire, and if they’re not in swimsuits on their hands and knees in front of the camera, they’re gazing at their audience like some millennial Lolita, adorned in virginal fairy princess costumes one might find at the Spirit Halloween.
All the women I see in the calendar’s pages or featured on the 12’s website are certainly dressed to impress the hormonally-rich, pent up undergraduate boys down at the SRC, but where are the sophisticated dresses? The sharp, professional apparel?
Do these Playboy-style photo shoots do anything to emphasize these women’s academic achievement? Do these images do anything to contribute to the welfare of female students?
The brief bios of these women provided by Tempe12 reflect the meager value placed on their actual personalities and success. The bios include only their declared major, GPA, hometown and some ironic, vapid quote or factoid, like: “When you are confident and comfortable with yourself (you) know that beauty is more than skin deep.” What exactly about these women’s brains are we celebrating?
Here’s the creepy kicker: These calendars are tacked to the walls of dorms rooms all over campus. It’s worse than Playboy pin-ups because these girls are real — they exist, they stroll through the same campus as the rest of us every day. With a little research on the website, you can find out where they work. You can find out where they go to class. There’s a sickening dynamic at play here, one that asserts possession over these women — they are the Tempe12, they are Tempe’s, they are ours. These scantily-clad women in sexy, submissive and vulnerable positions become cult-like idols of a shallow college culture which continually grinds any respectable, decorous view of women into dust.
Tempe12 does nothing to recognize outstanding achievement by female members of the student body. The deplorable truth is Tempe12 is only interested in recognizing outstanding student bodies and nothing more.
Reach the columnist at jwadler@asu.edu or follow him at MrJakeWAdler
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