THERE IS a new league in town that has already set tongues wagging.
They call themselves the League Of Xtreme Gentlemen and five of them appear in various state of undress on a special kind of calendar for each month of 2011.
It’s all guys, but the man behind the project, Greg Williams, said it was conceptualised with the ladies in mind.
“Woman don’t have any eye candy. There is nothing provided for women; everything is done for men. So I think it is time that women have their own eye candy on a yearly basis,” Williams told WE.
According to him, women were already approaching him saying the calendar was “long overdue”.
“Women like to have their imagery as well, just like men, so why are we only providing imagery for men of women? And women make up the masses. I going with the masses, I not going with the minority,” he stated.
It took four years to come to fruition, and Williams said he had so much confidence in his idea that he ploughed ahead even though there were only four sponsors on board. He sought the required funding to fill the shortfall. The entire production process itself took three months.
“I had to prove to people that I could produce a quality calendar, and that it was going to be as good as international standard, that people will want to have in their homes,” he said, adding that he was evening out the odds for women with the calendar.
Williams said the featured gentlemen, who are either fitness trainers or members of a leading health club, had to have a particular look.
“I wanted everyone to have a particular fit look, almost to the point of a Greek god. Everyone had to have a certain musculature, and not to be that massive muscle body, ’cause women are not into that muscle body anymore – they want the chiselled abs, the tight butt and the perfect body. The perfect body is of a certain symmetry, not the overly muscular so everyone for me, for the first calendar especially, had to have that perfect symmetry with their bodies,” Williams explained.
He said he had not given much thought to people saying the calendar was filled with gay men.
“They’re not. So I’m not worried. If because it’s anything with men you automatically assume that it’s going to be gay, that is your perogative, that’s your own mentality . . . . I know it’s not. Someone may look at this and think that it’s art; someone could look at this and think that it’s not . . . . Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so how someone interprets something is entirely up to them. I’m dealing with the masses and not with the minority,” he stated.
The photography was done by Julie Webster and the styling and creative directing by Williams. He said he and partner Damian Clarke, who founded the league, were working on an Xtreme Model Search, and Williams promised there would be 12 gentlemen on the 2012 calendar.
Even though the calendar was still being printed when Williams spoke to WE, he said they were already getting offers to appear at functions but declined to be more specific.
