In 2010, Amy Phillips created Blogger Body Calendar, a brilliant idea to take bloggers we know and love, photograph them, and sell the calendars to benefit a charity.
In 2011, she decided to hand over the reigns of her baby to us, The Band, at Band Back Together. Pretty powerful stuff.
The inaugural year, 2011, focused upon promoting healthy body image. Young men and women are constantly bombarded with messages that their self-worth correlates to the size of their jeans or bra. The participants of the calendar and this site - Band Back Together - do not believe in a society where worth is judged by individual beauty.
In the first year, 100 calendars were printed and $500 was donated to the National Eating Disorders Association.
The Blogger Body Calendar for 2012's focus is Survivors and Strength.
We are survivors. We survive domestic abuse, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, as well as self-abuse like eating disorders and self-injury. We survive and we do so beautifully.
This year the Blogger Body Calendar participants will show off the beautiful strength of survivors everywhere. We are, indeed, none of us alone.
Proceeds from this year's calendar will benefit Violence Unsilenced. The calendar is not sponsored by VU, nor does it involve their site at all. They are the beneficiary to our calendar.
To order the calendar, click on the button below:
2012 Calendar Participants:
January and October: Allison (aka @Alli_n_Son) from Alli ‘n Son
Allison, also known as Alli in the blogging world, is a slightly OCD momma (yes, you do have to eat M&Ms in pairs of matching colors). She’s the mother of one spunky, energetic and hilarious three-year-old boy, with another boy on the way (due this July).
She spends most of her free hours blogging at Alli ‘n Son. What began as her story of going from a working mom to a stay at home mom has morphed into something much more delicious. Breads. Pizza. Cookies. She loves to bake and cook and share. Most of all she loves to share, because she can’t eat all of this food by herself. Each Friday she hosts a weekly link up for sweet-inspired foods, Sweet Tooth Friday. Bring a napkin when you visit, you’ll be drooling in no time.
Not only does she cook and bake, she also creates. As a “retired” graphic designer she finds ways to stay creative through helping friends and family and through the lens of her camera. Life as a stay-at-home mom can get boring if you aren’t constantly looking for ways to be creative.
In the few minutes that she has left in the day that aren’t dedicated to eating cookies she spends as the Content Manager for Blogger Body Calendar.
---------------
February: Meredith (aka @BuenoBabyGirl) from BuenoBaby
Meredith Groenevelt is the voice behind BuenoBaby; a humorous, candid, raw look at a life, a marriage and a mommy-hood. Meredith began blogging, after she and her family of five moved to Mexico, as a way to share photos and stories with friends and family back home.
Along, with publishing her blog, she also freelances as a web designer. Occasionally she spends time on Twitter, and by occasionally, I mean she’s legally changing her name to @BuenoBabyGirl.
Today she lives in Wisconsin with her husband and their three daughters. She thinks she might have a cat.
-----------
March: Nichole (aka @itsmoments) from in these small moments
Nichole authors in these small moments, her blog about finding meaning and beauty in the ordinary moments of parenting, of life. Though first impressions lead readers to believe that she is simply sweet, those who get to know her see that beneath the sweetness is a writer who is open and vulnerable, with just a hint of snark.
She is one of the three creative minds behind The Red Dress Club, a virtual writers community and gathering place for anyone interested in learning more about the art of writing.
A former English professor, turned stay-at-home mom, Nichole maintains that although William Shakespeare has been replaced by Fancy Nancy, she is using those college degrees.
Nichole and her husband, Craig, live in Northern California, with their two young children, Katie and Matthew, and their cat with a completely inappropriate nickname.
-------------------
April: Jenna (aka @FireMom) Stop, Drop & Blog
Jenna Hatfield is a freelance writer, editor and photographer living in Ohio. She is married to a professional firefighter with whom she parents two amazing little boys. She is a birth mother to an amazing Munchkin, one of the reasons that she continues to raise awareness for ethical adoption reform.
She has been blogging since 2001 and currently maintains two blogs: Stop, Drop & Blog and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land.
--------------------
May: Charlotte (aka @MyPixieBlog) from My Pixie Blog
In October of 2009, Charlotte packed up the spacious apartment she shared with her boyfriend of six years, exchanged a tearful goodbye, and moved to a much smaller one-bedroom, leaving behind her security blanket and a world of memories. After allowing herself enough time to grieve the end of one era, she dusted herself off, picked up the pieces, and immersed herself in all the things she had once loved but let fall by the wayside for the sake of her relationship. Bikram yoga. Phish and assorted jam band concerts. Meditation. Writing. Blogging. Old lovers. New friends.
My Pixie Blog traces this journey of self discovery, following Charlotte’s adventures—from her strange-but-true online dating stories to her steamy bedroom romps—and the many lessons learned along the way. Today, this happily single 31-year-old can be found laughing, dancing, traveling, and celebrating her way through life’s finer moments.
---------------
June: Alex Iwashyna (aka @L8enough) from Late Enough
Alex is beyond excited to get to step into the calendar again and stand for survivors and strength. No one was more surprised than her, when she went from a philosophy degree to a medical degree to a poet to writing a humor blog (except when it’s serious) about life, parenting, marriage, culture and her inability to wake up in the morning and not hate everyone. However, her poem on domestic violence was used in a writing class for women in prison, which guarantees that she’ll always be a poet at heart. Through the years, Alex learned that she can survive almost everything if cake and hope are involved.
------------------
July: Andy (aka @andygirl) from Crazy with a Side of Awesomesauce
The adopted daughter of a drug addict narcissist, Andygirl is a child abuse and sexual assault survivor and, after lots of therapy, a reasonably well-adjusted, if quirky, adult. She’s a self-proclaimed cat lady, karaoke maven, nomad, Star Wars devotee, life-long dancer, and unabashed book nerd.
Andygirl blogs at Crazy with a Side of Awesome Sauce where she demonstrates life is always a little better with a hell of a lot of insanity and a smidge of awesome. Her eclectic blog is about the random humor in life and she doesn’t mince opinions on any topic from society to sex to her rogue ovaries and baby lust. She also shares her photography and co-judges a photography contest. You can also find her snarking twice a week over at Sprocket Ink.
She’s a former California girl turned Northwesterner and she has the flannel shirts and valley girl accent to prove it. Andygirl lives with her two furbabies, Hobbes and Jeté, in Portland, Oregon.
------------
August: Sandra from Body Bliss Central
A life-long warrior in the battle against the body image demons, Sandy Kumskov finally won her battle to love and accept her body the way it is, in her early 40s. She then set out to help other women find peace and acceptance of their own bodies, whatever their age, using the unique approach of holistic counseling which works with body, mind, and spirit.
The mother of two gorgeous adult women, Sandy lives in the Brisbane Valley in Australia with her husband Larry and two adorable fur people.
--------------
September: Michele (aka @ScrappinMichele) from Scraps of My Geek Life
Michele McGraw, ScrappinMichele, is a 43-year-old work-at-home mother of four children (2 girls, 7 and 12, 2 boys, 8 and 15). She met her husband, Jason on AOL 18 years ago in the Romance Connection room and they have now been married for 17 years and live in the Northern Virginia area.
After discovering she does love running (by being asked to participate in a 5k as a school fundraiser), Michele is now training to run her first half-marathon in September. When she has a few spare moments, she loves digital scrapbooking, researching anything, reading magazines, playing games on Wii, Kinect and DS and hanging out with her family at the beach (where she finds peace.)
----------------
November: Lerner (aka @stayathomebabe) from Stay At Home Babe
Lerner got knocked up when she was 21, cocktail waitressing in a strip club. Since her lifestyle didn’t scream Mommy! she went back to school, got an office job and flung herself head-long into single-motherhood. She met her husband by accident on Facebook while looking for a friend from high school who had the same name. He lived in England, she lived in Missouri. She never did anything the easy way. They got married, moved the whole clan to England, and had a baby. The accent was really hot.
The blogging addiction began in the summer of 2010 because she spent the whole day with her two year-old daughter and didn’t get many chances to tell dirty jokes, swear or talk about her sex life. In all seriousness, she was drowning in her motherhood and couldn’t think of any other way to find the funny, sexy, inappropriate part of herself which had slipped away under a pile of dirty dishes and laundry.
When she’s not hovering over her computer, she gardens or tends to her four chickens, two cats, two guinea pigs… oh and her two kids and husband. She is a heavily-tattooed, die-hard foodie who will dice and sauté anything that sits still long enough; so look out!
As a survivor of a decade of childhood molestation, she can’t say enough awesome things about this group of women coming together to bare their souls and their scantily-clad bosoms for such a good cause, and she is proud and honored to be asked to join them. It is so rock ‘n’ roll.
---------------
December: Jules (aka @michonblog) from Michon Michon
When Jules was in the 5th grade, she wrote a letter to Rick Springfield confessing her undying love. He never wrote back. She’s spent the rest of her life avoiding Jessie’s Girl, which is quite a feat since it’s played more often than you’d think.
In high school, she became addicted to Tetris while in typing class. This opened up a whole new world to her. Soon, she discovered the Internet, chat rooms, and that chat rooms were kind of creepy. However, as time progressed, she found a love for blogs. She’s co-owner and founder of Studio 30 Plus and Sprocket Ink.
In her spare time, she obsesses about what shoes to buy next, how she will meet her fake boyfriend, Jon Stewart, and what reality TV show to watch next. She’s hoping one day that there will be an award given for Worst Housewife in America. She’s sure she’d win.
