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Shock! Swiss farmers in underpants are models!

Malcolm Curtis
Malcolm Curtis - [email protected]
Shock! Swiss farmers in underpants are models!
Image from Swiss farmer's calendar. Photo: Bauernkalender.ch (detail)

A controversy has erupted after an annual calendar featuring buff Swiss farmers was exposed for showing “pretty boy” models in their place.

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Half the men who posed for the 2014 Schweizer Bauernkalendar, wearing nothing but their underpants, were not farmers and some were not even from Switzerland, 20 Minuten newspaper revealed this week.

“Suddenly, the farmers have no chest hair, are clean-shaven and the ‘farmers’ look as if they had been photographed for a glossy magazine,” the newspaper said.

The revelation was not greeted kindly the media partner for the calendar, the Schweizer Bauer (Swiss Farmer) magazine.

“Of course we wish we had 12 genuine farmers in the calendar,” the newspaper’s director Pamela Fehrenbach told 20 Minuten.

“We clearly distance ourselves from this product,” chimed in Sandra Helfenstein, spokeswoman for the Swiss Farmers’ Association.

The calendar advertises itself for its “Alpine boys”.

Click here to check out the farm "boys from the Alps"

Nathalie Rehak Schweizer Bauernkalendar representative, said it wasn’t the case that Switzerland did not have enough handsome farmers.

“Not at all,” Rehak told 20 Minuten.

“We only want to develop new directions and stay tuned to the market.”

The mostly bare-chested models are shown posing amidst corn, grapes, tomato plants and wheat, as well as in the woods and in a stream.

The real farmers, by contrast, all have their trousers on and are shown in activities on the farm, most of them with animals.

For good measure, the Schweizer Bauernkalendar also includes a version featuring skimpily clad farm “girls”.

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