Amy Schumer Doesn’t Give One Shit What You Think Of Her New Pirelli Calendar Portrait

The annual calendar made by Pirelli tyres has been a staple for creepy old dude’s bathrooms and work sheds for more than four decades now. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s fairly easy to imagine: famous models, artful lighting, an industrial-sized vat of baby oil, almost exclusively male photographers having the best time of their lives.

However, this year they’ve gone in a different direction. Partnering up with renowned celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz (who has shot the calendar once before), they decided to choose their 2016 models less on their ability to splay their body over an old tractor tyre and more on their prominence and importance in modern culture.

Announced back in September, the stars of the 2016 calendar include tennis great Serena Williams, artist Yoko Ono, musician Patti Smith, comedian Amy Schumer, Rookie‘s Tavi Genvinson, author Fran Lebowitz, model Natalia Vodianova, producer Kathleen Kennedy, actress Yao Chen, businesswoman Mellody Hobson, director Ava DuVernay, philanthropist Agnes Gund, and artist Shirin Neshat.

“I started to think about the roles that women play, women who have achieved something,” Leibovitz said at the time. “This calendar is so completely different. It is a departure. The idea was not to have any pretence in these pictures and be very straightforward … I thought that the women should look strong but natural.”

Today, the resulting pictures have delivered just that.

Here’s a 19-year-old Tavi Gevinson looking suitably graceful and intimidating:

Here’s Patti Smith staring straight into your soul:

And here’s Serena Williams, using one of the only two semi-nude portraits of the collection, to showcase her physicality and strength:

The other semi-nude offering came of course from Amy Schumer. In a nod to both the body and sex positivism that characterises much of her work, Schumer appeared casually topless on a stool drinking a takeaway cup of coffee: a pose I like to call “Yeah? What the fuck do you want?”

Beautiful, gross, strong, thin, fat, pretty, ugly, sexy, disgusting, flawless, woman. Thank you @annieleibovitz pic.twitter.com/kc0rIDvHVi

— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) November 30, 2015

“I felt I looked more beautiful than I’ve ever felt in my life, and I felt like it looked like me,” Schumer said in a promotional clip for the calendar. This paired with that accompanying caption on Twitter makes her message pretty clear: Amy Schumer does not need your opinion on her body.

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