Sirens of the Southern Tier

Volume 30
Spring-Summer
2004

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"Sometimes she glimpses a city-less time before calendars,
When her tribal grandmothers grew more luminous with age.
When any sister could round dance on Mother Earth,
naked to her proud waist, unafraid, center and giver of life.
This year the proud ones return.
We raise our arms up to the stars."

—from the poem, "Star Bodies" by Susan Deer Cloud (2003)

Libby Tucker
(ltucker@binghamton.edu)
teaches folklore at Binghamton University. This essay is dedicated to Susan Jablon, Susan Deer Cloud, and the other Sirens of the Southern Tier, and to the memory of Vaughn Ward. The author thanks Phillips Stevens, Jr., for his counsel in relation to women’s magic.

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Sirens of the Southern Tier by Libby Tucker

Calendars featuring images of ordinary women posing nude—sometimes, but not always, behind bouquets or teapots—have become popular ways to raise money for good causes. The idea outrages some communities, however. Controversy over one such calendar, featuring women of Binghamton, New York, suggests that an examination of attitudes about women’s bodies is warranted. The author sees remnant fears of the power of woman as a creative force but also finds evidence that the women who pose are engaging in a slightly subversive strategy. By appropriating from men the idea of pinups and using it for their own ends, they are able to convey to a large audience messages about who they are and what they stand for.

September 21, 2002:
Seventeen women stand at the top of a mahogany staircase in Incognito, a nightclub in downtown Binghamton, to celebrate the unveiling of their calendar, “Sirens of the Southern Tier.” In a few minutes the women will march downstairs, where a crowd of well-wishers will clap and snap pictures. Joyful music will play, and sales of calendars and T-shirts for the benefit of homeless women will begin.

Colleen Kane as the September Siren of the Southern Tier

Colleen Kane posed in a tub as the Siren of September. Created and produced by women, the "Sirens of the Southern Tier" calendar proved threatening to some members of the Binghamton community. Photo: Katie Deuel.

The celebration is all the more exuberant because of the community scandal that preceded it. Five months before, letters to the Binghamton Press excoriated the calendar models for daring to be photographed with some clothes missing. A front-page story, “Sirens of the Southern Tier,” raised so many hackles in the community that the YWCA withdrew its support for the project.

Now, calling themselves “Sirens” with pride, the women laugh and talk, preparing to walk downstairs for their gala reception. I am one of these women; my month is March. When I offered to be a calendar model, folklore research was far from my mind—my reasons for volunteering were personal. But after Katie Deuel, our photographer, took pictures of my friend Susan Deer Cloud and me in the woods near Bunn Hill Road, I realized that this calendar project involved not only performance art but also community reactions, women’s strategies, and a view of the female body that could be traced back to the late Middle Ages, if not before. With the blessing of my friend Susan Jablon, the creator of our calendar, I decided to analyze the meaning of our calendar project as a folkloric phenomenon.

What I will explore here is why women want to use their bodies to make statements and why it is difficult for some communities to accept this form of expression...Above all, I hope to analyze “Sirens of the Southern Tier” as a many-stranded story, in which common threads make a story told by all participants. To put this story in its proper context, I will look first at the traditions of women’s calendars...

Read Libby Tucker’s story of this calendar project and analysis of it as a folkloric phenomenon in "Sirens of the Southern Tier" in Voices Vol. 30, Spring-Summer 2004.

Susan Deer Cloud and Libby Tucker, the March Sirens

Susan Deer Cloud (left) and Libby Tucker were the March models. Photo: Katie Deuel.

September 21, 2003: Our calendar’s year is drawing to a close. After having raised more than $7,000 for homeless women, the other calendar models and I have gone back to our individual pursuits. Looking at our pictures one more time, I marvel at what I have learned by taking part in this project...

Excerpts and photos here are "Sirens of the Southern Tier" by Libby Tucker, from Voices Vol. 30, Spring-Summer 2004. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society now.