The Campaign for Nursing's Skanky Tomorrow

October 3, 2007 -- Today the BBC ran a story about a calendar showing two Members of Parliament from Sussex surrounded by "models dressed as saucy nurses"--a calendar created as part of a campaign to prevent the closure of emergency wards at two U.K. hospitals. The MPs are understandably baffled about why nurses have protested what a union official describes as the calendar's use of the "dinosaur stereotype of nurses as sexual objects." We think the MPs have hit on a simply brilliant idea: The way to help improve abysmal clinical conditions and resolve the global nursing shortage is to help the public understand that nurses really are brainless bimbos ready to provide sexual services. Nothing sells better than sex, right? So please thank MPs Tim Loughton (left) and Peter Bottomley (right) for their keen understanding of the nursing crisis, and join our new campaign, inspired by the MPs: The Campaign for Nursing's Skanky Tomorrow.

The piece, "Nurses' anger at MPs saucy snaps" explains that the provocative calendar was the idea of "local businessmen" and was "produced by a restaurateur." It aims to keep the Worthing and Southland hospitals from losing their A&E departments, obviously a worthy goal. But Steve Brazier, a regional official for the nursing union Unison, said many nurses were disgusted at how their profession was portrayed.

It is a dinosaur stereotype of nurses as sexual objects which is deplorable and inappropriate and unacceptable. It demeans the whole profession.

Brazier is obviously good at thinking of synonyms for "really bad," but he just doesn't understand the awesomeness of this calendar. MP Loughton sets him straight:

If any harm or damage had been intended to any nurses or professionals we wouldn't have done it. ... It was meant as a piece of harmless fun in order to promote a very serious cause about our hospitals and it got a very good response [when first released]. What is the big fuss about? Let's get on with saving our hospitals.

You go, sir! We just couldn't agree more. As long as the MPs did not actually intend to harm nurses, no harm could have been caused. It's simple logic.

And what is the "big fuss" about? Aren't these honorable gentlemen actually onto something gigantic?

We doubt the public in this day and age is going to part with its hard-earned dollars to fund hospital care with some boring messages about how nurses use their advanced skills to care for sick patients in their darkest hours, teach them how to live with their conditions, advocate for their interests when no one else will, blah blah blah. The list of things the public thinks nurses do to save lives and improve outcomes is just endless, and, let's face it, endlessly dull.

Isn't the real reason there's a nursing crisis in the first place because the public is laboring under this delusion that nurses are serious professionals? Most people just don't get that nurses are actually a fun-loving collection of unskilled angels, physician handmaidens, and cheerful sex workers. People are far more likely to spend money on brainless sluts. What do you think they're doing on the Internet? If only people knew the real story, vast sums of government and private sector funding would flow immediately to nursing "education" and clinical settings.

So far from ending this calendar, we must spread and enhance its brilliant message. We've seen the naughty nurse used to support blood drives, and while that was cool, the image's potential to actually resolve the nursing shortage remains completely untapped. Let's persuade the WHO and some pharmaceutical corporations to blow this thing up into a major global public service campaign, with socially conscious stars who've already supported nursing with saucy nurse imagery doing special ads in all major media. How about Christina Aguilera and Kelly Ripa in skimpy "naughty nurse" attire giving special "sponge baths" to Dr. Phil and David Letterman? Mmmm...saucy.

We doubt there'll be any more "fuss" about staffing ratios, mandatory overtime, and deadly shortages after the public realizes what nursing is really all about. So join our campaign now! Please give generously to The Campaign for Nursing's Skanky Tomorrow, so the Center can build on the "saucy nurse" calendar's success!

Please send your thoughts on the helpfulness of this calendar to MP Tim Loughton at loughtont@parliament.uk and to MP Peter Bottomley at BottomleyP@parliament.uk. Please send us a copy at letters@truthaboutnursing.org. Thank you!

See the article "Nurses' anger at MPs saucy snaps" on the BBC website.

Also see a related article "Nurses angry at 'smutty' calender" (sic) by Rachel Wareing posted on The Argus website October 2, 2007.