It's 1999. The biggest sporting event in the world, the Olympic Games, is less than a year away.
Others say it was a Melbourne businessman who approached Fisher, offering to add the Matildas in his catalogue of nude calendars and other raunchy material he published in Australia. "There had been men's AFL calendars as well, and that's what was put to us: men are doing these things, why can't the women do it?
Second, there would be supervision at the photo shoot to ensure the players weren't being exploited beyond what they had agreed to do. "It was especially hard around the teenage years once I started going to the gym because I was in an intensive training program down in Newcastle, working towards getting into the national team.
While the first edition was originally meant to publish just 5,000 copies, that number increased to 45,000 based on the strength of pre-publication interest. It sold out within weeks, leading to a second edition being published by popular demand."It changed the world for the Matildas," Reid says. The Matildas' nude calendar and its accompanying story is a time capsule, an insight into the creative lengths some women athletes went to in order to break into the consciousness of an apathetic or oblivious Australian public.
"It was professionally photographed. But it was pushing the envelope. It wasn't Rodin's 'Nude'; they weren't sexless. But we didn't let anything go through that we thought was too much. "They were finely-tuned athletes who were proud of what they've built with their bodies and wanted to show that." Berry recalls several Matildas players being invited to a Liberal Party fundraising event at a famous Melbourne-based club, where the AWSA was able to form relationships with politicians and potential future donors.
She had to get written permission from her parents to take part in the shoot, which happened in a lecture hall at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. Her parents fully supported her decision, trusting her judgement and maturity.She remembers her mum running around to several newsagencies buying up copies of the calendar once it had been released, and still has Alicia's photo framed and hanging in her house.
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