Is a bare-all calendar a sure-fire way for your community group to raise funds this Christmas?

An Australian researcher said Monday total exposure was a turn-off and that calendars leaving something to the imagination were the better sellers.

"Experience has shown that in the successful calendars the bodies must be sanitized - non-erotic, maternal, coy and covered," University of Tasmania lecturer Dr Pamela Turton-Turner said. "That is, they are de-eroticized because they are accepted as maternal, giving and nurturing."

She told Australia's AAP news agency that pubic hair and nipples were out and strategically held teacups and flowers were in.

What makes a charity calendar a commercial success, she said, was the "stark comparison between the ageing, sometimes bizarre, non-classic bodies of the men and women in them compared with the classic, idealized and erotic bodies of people in movies and advertising."