A scarcity, but at one time I am sure a welcome addition to many struggling barbershops and gas stations across the country. I hate to credit Reuben Sturman, sleaze magnate and all around bad guy with anything positive, but this calendar, published two years before James Brown's "Say it Loud: I'm Black and Proud" was one of the first indications (I am serious here) that Black women were beautiful enough to be on the wall anywhere. Can you imagine what that meant to the race?
To see "Sepia Stunners" in a calendar?
I am sure this was not uplifting to a major part of the community, but it was a landmark of sorts anyway.
Do not consider me a racist for pointing this out...it was the dominant white culture with a problem. A problem which unfortunately persists even today among certain folks, and bless the current generation to whom color matters not.
The anonymous model was used around the same time (shown below) by Leonard Burtman, but by 1966 he was having financial problems, both personally and with his distributor. Partly as a result of censorship which today seems foolish (and it was) but also because producing his high quality smut magazines was expensive. Up stepped the King of Porn, Reuben Sturman. That is his logo at top (no...not the pussycat, the tiny WWNC globe, which depicts his company initials literally covering the world with slime.
If there was a buck to be made, Sturman didn't care if the model was purple or orange, he'd take the green. So he "helped out" by taking over the product for a while.
As unseemly as this calendar might seem today, it was a breakthrough in racial consciousness, and a mere THIRTY YEARS LATER Sports Illustrated was shooting the sisters for their swimsuit issue. So who is the pioneer here? Tyra Banks wasn't even born yet when this calendar came out. Like Jazz, the races got along better in the sleaze business.
Uhura didn't make out with Captain Kirk on Star Trek until two years later, Same with Diahann Carroll and Julia, the first sitcom with an African-American woman as a lead character. 1968.
As I have written before, and as my modest book SECRET HISTORY OF THE BLACK PIN UP indicates, women of color didn't become wall candy until LONG after their Caucasian sisters, for better or worse...but this is one of the first examples. Were there Black Pin ups? Yes, but not until decades after their white sisters.
1966 Pussycat Calendar "Featuring Twelve Exciting Sepia Stunners All In Exotic Color" 1966 (1965) Collection Victor Minx.
Tweet
