Beiruting News

When Agnes Gund, the 77-year-old philanthropist and president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, got the call, she thought: "That's odd. What's that got to do with someone like me?"

When Fran Lebowitz, the 65-year-old author, got the call, she said, "I thought it was a joke."

And when Mellody Hobson, the 46-year-old president of Ariel Investments, a $10 billion money management firm based in Chicago, got the call, she mentioned it to her husband, the filmmaker George Lucas, who raised an eyebrow and said, "Do you know what that is?"

You can understand the quandaries, given that the call came from the office of the photographer Annie Leibovitz, and involved a request that each woman participate in the 2016 Pirelli calendar, the arty soft-core ode to pinups produced by the Italian tire manufacturer, shot by renowned photographers, starring supermodels, and never sold but given to an exclusive group of 20,000 "V.I.P.'s, musicians, politicians and royalty," according to a company spokesman.

To say that women like as Mesdames Hobson, Gund and Lebowitz are not its usual subjects is something of an understatement.

In the 50 years since the Pirelli calendar was conceived as "an eye-popping advert for their high-quality products, a freebie that would be proudly displayed and obsessed over year-round by their target market," according to "The Calendar: 50 Years and More," a coffee-table book from Taschen, it has featured a completely naked Kate Moss, Lara Stone and Joan Smalls (2012, Mario Sorrenti); Gisele Bündchen, Karen Elson and Carmen Kass playing peekaboo with bottoms and bosoms (2001, Mario Testino); and a topless and/or naked Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Nadja Auermann (1995, Richard Avedon).

But that was then. On Monday, a new kind of Pirelli calendar was unveiled, showcasing 12 months of fully clad women (mostly) chosen for their achievements. Though the calendar has, on rare occasions, featured women in clothes (most notably in 2013, when it was shot in Brazil by Steve McCurry), this is the first time there is no provocation in the posing, and the first time the attraction of the subjects is in their résumés, not their measurements.

Along with Playboy's decision in October to end nudity in its pages, the Pirelli pivot seems to give real substance to the theory that we are at a flexion point in the public objectification of female sexuality. Especially because the calendar, which is introduced every year with a giant party attended by not only the fashion flock but, in 2012, by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil; and, in 2014, Roberto Maroni, the president of Lombardy, has become something of a collector's item.

It's been immortalized in two Rizzoli books ("The Pirelli Calendar: The Complete Works, 40 Years" and "The Pirelli Calendar: 1964 - 2001, The Complete Works"). It is, to a certain extent, a historical record.

And what it is recording this time is "a very macro trend," said Jennifer Zimmerman, the global chief strategy officer for the McGarryBowen advertising agency. "We call it the rise of the shero" - that is, the female hero. With the switch in subject matter, she said, "the greatest offender had become the greatest bandwagoneer."

Aside from Mrs. Gund (March), who was photographed with her college-age granddaughter; Ms. Hobson (June); and Ms. Lebowitz (May); the calendar stars Yoko Ono (October); Ava DuVernay, the "Selma" director (July); Shirin Neshat, the Iranian artist (September); Kathleen Kennedy, the producer of "Lincoln" (February); Patti Smith (November); and Tavi Gevinson, the millennial media maven and actress (August).

The exceptions to the fully-dressed rule are Serena Williams (April), who is pictured topless, back to the camera, muscles gleaming; Amy Schumer (December), in a lingerie with her stomach rolls on display (the joke being she was the one who did not get the message); and the model and philanthropist Natalia Vodianova (January), in a voluptuous satin robe with one bare leg exposed and her youngest child clutched in her arms.

"We are in the midst of a perfect storm of cultural icons and politics and Hollywood," Ms. Zimmerman said. "Between the first credible woman presidential candidate, all the powerful female characters on television from 'Supergirl' to 'Madam Secretary' to 'Scandal,' the pressure for parity in pay, it is impossible to ignore the empowerment of women. Besides, who uses a calendar anymore? It has to stand for something else."

There's little doubt that the Pirelli pivot will be widely perceived as a political statement, not least because Ms. Leibovitz had shot a Pirelli calendar in 2000 that featured more traditional and unclad models like Laetitia Casta posed as classic Greek nudes. But is it simply an example of calculated exploitation of a social trend, a clever attempt to profit from the spirit of the age or a more permanent commitment to change?

That the answer is still under debate is indicative of just how sensitive this issue remains.

"I feel it helps put a new perspective on women of achievement," Ms. Hobson said. "You have to give them credit for being bold at this moment. We have a long way to go, but this is part of that journey."

By VANESSA FRIEDMAN