Barely There: The Vet calendar hanging on by its bare ass
What happens at Massey’s Vet School doesn’t just stay there... in fact, you can put it on your wall.
Ditching their stethoscopes and striping their daks, for almost 15 years third-year Vet students have posed Adam-and-Eve-style for the annual tradition — the Barely There calendar.
Launched in 2006, the calendar is Kiwiana meets a renaissance masterpiece. Women are draped over tractors, modestly concealed by cowboy hats. Men sport nothing but smiles and a pair of Redband's. Gingham shirts are flung off in cabbage patches. And stubbies are stripped in shearers quarters.
A photo which featured in the most recent Barely There calendar. Photo / Supplied
Last year's calendar sold more than 1300 copies to students, agricultural workers, friends and shepherds alike.
Vet students Emma Grigg and Summer Didsbury took on the task of organising 80 cheeky volunteers.
Emma says that getting naked in front of their classmates wasn’t as weird as they’d feared.
“I mean no one wanted to be the first one to take off their clothes,” Emma laughs.
After three years of dissecting dead rats and getting caked in cow shit, seeing each other nude was, apparently, tame and somewhat liberating.
The calendar raises funds for the third years' ‘Halfway Day’ — a celebratory trip to Taupō for making it halfway through their degree. A portion of the proceeds also goes towards a charity of their choice. Last year, they raised $3,347 for Rural Support Trust, which provides mental health services in rural communities.
The calendar has strict nudity guidelines: Women can’t have visible nipples, and no one can have their genitalia out and about.
Bums, however, are fair game.
Calendars featuring naked women have long carried a reputation for being ‘dirty’. Emma admits she was cautious of how the Vet women might be perceived, but says the Barely There calendar is far from sexualised.
Regardless of gender or body type, anyone was welcome to join and have a laugh in what she calls a “quintessentially rural New Zealand” tradition.
After the photoshoots, Summer says they received messages from classmates thanking them for such a freeing, fun experience.
However, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.
In 2019, the calendar was put on a three-year hiatus after a Vet school overseas faced backlash for its own charitable nude calendar. The London Royal Veterinary College's calendar featured a photo of male students ‘tipping’ sheep in front of their nude bodies.
Usually, tipping is for setting sheep on their rumps for shearing sheep or medication. But this time the tipping was the cover their… tips.
The photos were condemned as disrespectful and unnecessary by the Veterinary Vegan Network. And accusations of bestiality spread online. The college ended up apologising for “any unnecessary handling that was not for the direct benefit of the animal".
That year, Barely There did a shoot with the same concept. And despite the controversy being halfway across the world, the sheep shagging allegations spooked Massey University. The Barely There calendar was put to bed, and in 2020 was replaced with a bake sale and special-edition tea towel fundraisers.
But the students couldn’t ignore the call of the wild forever.
In 2023, the calendar returned — this time without university backing.
However, they set up some new rules. Nude participants were now required to stay at least two metres away from any animal. Where students once posed patting greyhounds and brushing Shetland ponies, they are now left cuddling fence posts.
Emma says, “You would think all being Vet students that nobody has got weird intentions.”
Despite last year’s success, Emma says the calendar’s future is still uncertain.
“We found it to be a hugely positive thing, and I would love to see it continue. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the ‘PC bullshit’ shuts it down.”
But don’t fret calendar collectors and au-natural Vet enthusiasts, the Barely There calendar has been confirmed for another round this year. We're set for another iconic, unclad, socially animal-distanced calendar.