Pharmacy Students Vamp it Up for Charity

Pin-up style photo shoot combines a good time and a good cause

By Jeff Raymond
March 11, 2008

More than a dozen University of Maryland School of Pharmacy students spent a recent Saturday recreating the golden age of pinup photography, all for some laughs and a good cause.

The students curled their hair, painted their lips, and squeezed into vintage costumes, then posed in the mockup of a 1950s-era pharmacy located in the basement of the Maryland Pharmacists Association’s building on the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus. Their efforts will be turned into calendars that will be sold to raise money for the American Diabetes Association’s campaign to address Type 2 diabetes among minority youth.

Seferina Kim-Walsh, a third-year pharmacy student and senior chair of the student organization Operation Diabetes, developed the idea. She and several of her School of Pharmacy friends thought it would be fun to spend a day playing dress-up, especially while being able to raise money to help a cause they already support.

She enlisted the help of Jillian Teague, a Baltimore-based photographer who runs a vintage pinup studio called Bombs Over Betty. Teague, who recently lost her grandfather to diabetes, quickly agreed to donate her services. She also enlisted the help of two colleagues to help apply makeup, and Kim-Walsh found a vintage clothing store, Mode Merr, willing to donate costumes for the day.

The women, and two men, posed in campy salutes to their future profession. Some were shown explaining drugs to a customer, demonstrating a blood-sugar monitor, fumbling with pill bottles or administering a flu vaccination. The poses, while flirty, could scarcely be called racy, but definitely reflect the sense of fun that the student/models and the photographer were seeking.

The calendars will be available at the School of Pharmacy in the spring for $10. The initial calendars will run from July 2008 through June 2009, reflecting the year of a pharmacy resident, and contain information pertaining to pharmacy students and pharmacists. Another calendar, supplemented with pictures of incoming students, will be available for the 2009 calendar year.