Calendargate

The Calendargate controversy among American conservatives developed in December 2023 after the release of a 2024 calendar featuring photographs of young female conservative activists or commentators, some scantily dressed but not exposing any private parts. Social conservatives, evangelicals and postliberals attacked it as a concession to a mass popular culture they see as debauched and sexualized and seek to put right; while more libertarian commentators, sometimes described as "Barstool conservatives", favored it and expressed dismay at the criticism. Debates among conservatives about the calendar online, particularly on Twitter, continued into 2024.

The controversy was seen as dividing the two largest elements of the political coalition supporting Donald Trump's bid to regain the presidency later that year. Liberal observers who commented saw the controversy as reflecting a fundamental contradiction in the coalition's underlying beliefs that the calendar's critics, knew needed to be resolved for future political success; while its supporters saw as not mattering, a divide that had been endemic since the two groups joined forces behind Trump.

Background

Earlier in 2023, conservatives angry that AB InBev had hired transwoman influencer Dylan Mulvaney as a brand ambassador for Bud Light launched a boycott that hurt the brand's sales enough to cost it the position of America's bestselling beer, which it had held since 2001. Conservatives had previously mostly eschewed organized boycotts of consumer products over political issues, a tactic more commonly associated with political progressives, and had never succeeded as they appeared to have done with Bud Light. They thus felt empowered to find new ways of challenging corporate America, which despite its traditional preference for government by the Republican Party had been increasingly criticized by conservatives as "woke", catering to racial and sexual minorities in the effort to broaden their customer bases. Many conservatives focused on creating alternative brands to popular ones that they saw as too closely associated with causes and organizations they identified with the political left.

In April 2023, as conservative anger towards Bud Light grew, Seth Weathers, under the name Conservative Dad, launched Ultra Right Beer, brewed in Gwinnett County, Georgia, as an alternative. Within two weeks he reported over $1 million from sales of 20,000 six-packs. "This is more than a beer company, it's a movement of people who are speaking up and saying no", he said, urging conservatives to not buy any Anheuser-Busch products again. "This behavior from Big Corporate will never end until conservatives hold the line."

Calendar

In early December Ultra Right offered as merch on its website "Conservative Dad's Real Women of America 2024 Calendar." It featured pictures of women known as conservative commentators, influencers and activists, among them Dana Loesch and Kim Klacik, in pin-up poses, most (but not all), in minimal attire. The cover features Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who has campaigned against allowing transwomen to compete in sports against ciswomen, lying on her back with arms outstretched and one knee lifted, wearing a red, white and blue bikini next to the side of a pool with a can of Ultra Right in front of her; she also appears, similarly clad, in two other images. Ultra Right said it would donate 10 percent of the sales revenue from the calendar to the Riley Gaines Center, her activist group.

The website described the calendar as "a celebration of conservative women who are fighting woke extremist[s] to preserve real women". Weathers clarified that the calendar's message was anti-transgender in a statement beginning with an apparent denial. "This calendar is in no way intended to discredit transwomen ... because there is no such thing as a 'transwoman'", he told Fox Business. It was noted that one of the images featured conservative comedian Ashley St. Clair wearing a black bra and pearl necklace while sitting in a bubble bath, an apparent reference to one of Mulvaney's Bud Light videos.

Controversy

The day after the calendar was released, conservative Christian author and filmmaker Evan Kilgore condemned it on Twitter. Calling it "DISGUSTING and DEGENERATE", he said it made conservatives who claimed to be "'anti-porn' and 'anti-OnlyFans'" look hypocritical. "I HATE the Conservative movement!"

Around the Christmas holidays at the end of the month, the criticism gave rise to vigorous debate among online conservatives. On December 24, conservative Christian rapper Bryson Gray commented on Twitter that the calendar's combination of "half naked women" with Christian imagery was "demonic". He appeared to be referring to its picture of Josie the Redheaded Libertarian, in which she stands in a kitchen wearing a short blue dress with one leg lifted and bent, looking toward the camera while she holds a freshly prepared pie, a pose suggesting a tradwife, with a wooden crucifix conspicuous on the wall behind her. Two days later, after the holiday, former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis responded to another tweet mocking Gaines for posing so suggestively for the calendar after having cited fears of locker-room voyeurism to justify excluding transwomen from sports. "This is the problem with conservatives who think they can act just like the secular world," she wrote. "If conservatives aren't morally grounded Christians, what are we even 'conserving'?"

Podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey posted at length later that day:

You can probably guess what I think about a calendar branded for "conservative dads" filled with pictures of women, many of them married and many of them very scantily clad. Hate it. I also find the discourse ridiculous, as if we're all supposed to pretend we don't understand the purpose of a calendar of posed, full-body pictures of women. You can call me a prude, puritanical, or jealous of these women's beauty—whatever makes you feel better. I just don't see the value in marketing what's basically, in some photos, soft porn to married (or unmarried) men. Of course these women are gorgeous, and of course I'm all for celebrating true femininity in an age that can't define "woman". In my view, this doesn't accomplish that at all ... I'm aware there may be bigger battles to fight than this. But I happen to know that there are many Christian conservatives who share this same perspective behind the scenes, and I wanted to give them a voice. The polarization between Christian and secular conservatism is only going to grow, my friends, so buckle up!

C.J. Pearson, a defender of the calendar, also noted the division and called on conservatives to unite. "The other side is literally giving tampon sponsorships to chicks with dicks", he wrote. "Can we focus on the actual enemy for once?"

In a Space hosted by the conservative magazine Human Events, Jack Posobiec called the calendar "ultra cringe. I don't think [it] should have been done, and if it was done it shouldn't have been done in this way". Inez Stepman, a fellow at the Claremont Institute, recalled how as a child her parents would decide whether she could see a particular R-rated film based on whether its quality offset whatever content had led to the rating. "[T]he only comment I'll make on The Calendar is that it fails that test", she said.

Responses from those who had no problem with the calendar came in the next day. Critics of the calendar were likened to the Taliban; one commenter posted a picture of women in the 1950s wearing long skirts and sweaters and suggested Gray's condemnation of the calendar showed "just how much he lusted after his grandma". Another tweet called the images "beautiful pics tastefully done" compared to the calendars she had seen on the walls of auto repair shops she had frequented with her mechanic father growing up. Accompanied by the image of a 1990 Playboy cover featuring Trump and a Playboy bunny, Chad Prather expressed amazement that many of his fellow Trump supporters "have suddenly found some superior sense of morality over a calendar with well-known conservative women on its pages." Later, Proud Boys co-founder Gavin McInnes called the controversy "literally gay. You're allowed to enjoy looking at sexy, beautiful women. It's healthy and normal. Grow up." One America News Network producer Peyton Drew posted additional pictures from the shoot in response.

Josie took some of the criticism personally, sometimes commenting on how her female critics were dressed in photos. On Christmas, she responded to Rumble host Anna Perez's saying "nothing about this calendar is Christian or conservative" by writing "Too much cleavage for a moral Christian girl" over a headshot of Perez in front of a microphone. "Oh spare me your righteous indignation, Jenna", she wrote on the morning of December 28, contrasting her calendar photo with an image of Ellis in a tight pink dress in front of a movie poster for Barbie. "I am wearing more layers than you." Two hours later Josie said she did not mind that her response increased Ellis's engagements: "She needs that ad revenue money to start paying back all those people she took money from." After she speculated that the real reason for objections to her calendar photo was not so much that she was in it but that she was attractive, noting that she had the same bodily measurements as Marilyn Monroe, another interlocutor noted that degree of self-absorption was exactly what critics were objecting to. "Your wife got you wanking it to my calendar page didn't she[?]", Josie responded.

Weathers weighed in as well. Responding to a tweet where it was suggested that "if more wives tried to look like the women in the calendar...maybe their marriages would be a little better", he extended that to both sexes. "Imagine the improved marriages if people's take on #CalendarGate was to join the gym so they'd be sexually appealing for their spouses?" he asked. "Our country is obese. Stop bitching about people who have worked hard for their bodies & join a gym to get your own!" He later posted a Cameo video on the subject from George Santos, in which the former congressman praised the calendar as "fabulous", urged everyone watching to buy at least two, said he would buy 50 and called its critics "delusional".

After Posobiec hosted a three-hour Spaces where he, Gray, Josie, St. Clair and Weathers debated the issue, social conservatives began responding again, sharing how alienating the criticism was. "It really made me realize the 'Conservative Movement' isn't for me much longer", Kilgore said afterwards. "It's all a massive grift and these people laugh at Christians with traditional values." He later characterized the discussion as the other four "criticiz[ing Gray], laugh[ing] at him, and deflect/virtue-signal[ing] all evening??" rather than addressing his core criticism. The next day he reported that St. Clair, whom he had considered a friend, had blocked him.

See also

• List of -gate scandals and controversies