Bev Atkinson never would have posed for a calendar when she was younger. She would have been too embarrassed.

But now that she’s 70 she figures everything that could be said about her has already been said.

Atkinson is one of the members of the Dorcas Society of Hollis and Buxton who will be exposing their sultry sides this Saturday when the society releases its 2009 Dorcas Dishes Calendar during a fundraiser for the Maine Cancer Society.

“It’s a celebration of life and woman,” said Atkinson. “Even though we’re in our 60s and 70s, we’re still willing to be active.”

The society for $15 will sell the calendar, which consists of photographs of Dorcas members modeling vintage underwear from the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, at Quillcote, the summer home of children’s author Kate Douglas Wiggin, and at the Royal Brewster Mansion, a national historic register site in Buxton.

The gallery event will be Saturday, Nov. 1, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Old White Church on Salmon Falls Road in Bar Mills.

“Snipets of Wiggin’s writing from her many books and her play ‘The Old Peabody Pew’ accompany each photograph,” said Dorcas Society member Jan Hill, 61, who also posed for the calendar. “The calendar offers a celebration of life to the cancer survivors among the group and the strong, resilient and loving spirits of all women.”

The calendars were inspired by the movie Calendar Girls, where women mostly over the age of 50 posed nude while performing various gardening and homemaking tasks to raise money for local hospitals in Yorkshire, England, Hill said.

“The Dorcas Society decided to see the movie together, and at the end one of the oldest and most respected members of the society was overheard saying that we could do this,” Hill said. “Two younger women overhearing her agreed.”

The 2009 calendar is dedicated to longtime Dorcas member the late Barbara Cole of Hollis, who taught for 31 years in S.A.D. 6.

“Barbara Cole was a dedicated, longtime member of the Dorcas Society,” Hill said. “She was loving and exacting and is remembered fondly by many as having a particular interest in helping students who struggled to find their way.”

The Dorcas Society was created in November 1893 and is a nonprofit charitable, literary, social organization founded by Kate Douglas Wiggin, who wrote the book “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

The reception will also feature enlarged mounted prints of the calendar photographs. Photographer Claudia Murray of Scarborough took the photos.

The Gallery is also open from 1-4 p.m. and refreshments will be served.

For more information, call 929-8895 or 929-6356.

Carrie Cole is the 2009 Dorcas Society Calendar