On Halloween, about 2000 people received an email from the Highfields Center for Composting offering “New Rewards for Highfields’ Heat Recovery Kickstarter Project!” The Hardwick nonprofit has been researching ways to better capture the heat generated by decomposing food scraps, and is in the midst of a $40,000 Kickstarter campaign to help fund a research center.

The two images that accompanied the email, though, were startling for some. In one, a smiling woman held up squash to obscure her naked breasts, while straddling a green placard with the word ‘Compost’ written across it. Another woman lay topless in a pile of dark humus, flinging some up with her left foot. Both models were volunteers for a 2013 ‘Hot Compost’ calendar that Highfields’ planned to offer as a reward in its campaign.

But the cheeky photos sparked a small but vocal backlash from customers and others who found the concept offensive and demeaning to women. Under pressure, Highfields scrapped plans for the calendar and offered an apology on its website and Facebook page, in which it called the concept a “mistake” and said it did not reflect Highfields as an organization.

Corin Hirsch was a Seven Days food writer 2011 through 2016. She was also a dining critic and drinks columnist at Newsday from 2017 to 2022, and contributes to The Guardian, Wine Enthusiast and other publications. She’s spoken often on colonial era drinking and is the author of Forgotten Drinks of Colonial New England, published by History Press in 2014.

27 replies on “Highfields Pulls ‘Hot Compost’ Nude Calendar After Unexpected Heat”

  1. Sexism and objectification of women, regardless of whether or not the person posing consents or not, does not advance gender equality either.

  2. In my letter to the HArdwick Gazette, I called the pictures “mildly naughty vegetable play.”
    Yes, the text was badly written and juvenile. But that doesn’t mean the women were exploited.
    As with all sexual imagery, if you want to know whether the women in the pix felt exploited, ask them. Obviously they did not.
    Prudery does not advance gender equality.
    Judith Levine

  3. Nate, Did you watch the film referenced in the comments? It’s not about nudity or being a “prude”. Sexism is harmful to the entire society. You can choose to see that as humorous and choose to ridicule those who call out the harm but that doesn’t make the harmfulness of it go away.

  4. The best argument against this calendar is made by Sheila below – the text accompanying the calendar images and promotional material was poorly written, poorly targeted and obviously not in accord with the image of Highfields.
    Despite your attempt to paint Highfields and Seven Days as “objectification-deniers” akin to climate change denialism, what this boils down to is awkwardly written material and a clear error in marketing to Highfield’s current audience. Framing it as a social justice problem is frankly ridiculous, and does actual movements for social justice no good by conflating the very serious and real problems in the world with such absurdity.
    And the word anthropogenic – I don’t think anyone is arguing that climate change is shaped like or has the personal characteristics of a human being.

  6. The writing around the calendar from Highfields was shoddy and amateurish, not to mention they obviously don’t know much about their target audience. For a lot of businesses, the calendar itself would probably be perfectly fine – that *might* even have been true for Highfields, but obviously the framing language used struck a discordant note with the e-mail recipients.
    The calendar idea, and the images released, seem harmless to me. The outrage kicked up in response is typical of people who actively think of themselves as progressive, tolerant and open-minded – what they really mean is they accept just as narrow a range of behavior and belief as anyone you’ll ever meet, but it’s their narrow range and they like it.
    At least it’s good entertainment for the rest of us. Few things are as humorous as the horrified gasps of prudes at the sight of mildly suggestive photographs – or the puffed up pronouncements of the primmest rectitude, more useful for shoring up the self-image of “social justice activists” than for protecting the world from the pernicious influence of compost hotties.

  7. I did. Where, exactly, do you draw the line – and who gets to draw it? Do you think we should cover up all the classic sculpture at the State House because a lot of it happens to feature nudes? How about the statue near the entrance to the Chamber that depicts a near-naked Native American in stereotypical “noble savage” regalia? Maybe we should go to museums throughout the world and blockade the doors, or pretend that people are actually going to stop enjoying sexual imagery just because you think they should stop. From what I can see, the calendar features models who appear to be doing this voluntarily and are having fun. Does it sell? Yes; always has, always will. Why does that bother you so much?

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