All these years spent fighting for equality between the sexes, and this is what it's come to: If a boy wants to get ahead these days, he's got to show a little skin.

The latest player to go the pin-up route is Robert Reich, the 57-year-old Brandeis hottie and gubernatorial candidate manque, who recently posed nude(ish) for Cambridge Community Television's fund-raiser, ``Cambridge Uncovered: The Calendar.''

Which suggests perhaps Mr. June has not given up the dream of holding electoral office. Because if anything prepares a man for the rigors of public service, it's a nude photo shoot.

Indeed, at a talk in Lincoln on Saturday, Reich was introduced as the next potential U.S. Senate candidate ``when John Kerry is president.''

The former Secretary of Labor reportedly claimed he hadn't thought about running for Senate and wouldn't say whether he'd take another stab at a statewide run, but the come-hither picture tells a different story.

There he is at the Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, all coy in a rolled-up bathing suit and a strategically placed fruit basket and baguette. If that doesn't scream ``get out the vote,'' I don't know what does.

Perhaps Reich is taking a page from Kerry's playbook. He must have checked out the two-page Kerry spread in this month's Vogue, in which the so-called ``Surfing Senator'' is shown striding out of the ocean, holding his board, his hair slicked by the sea, his curves hugged by a black wet suit. Message: I'm presidential material.

Or perhaps Reich is trying to create his version of the Romney swimsuit commercial - the one where Mitt was wearing only a bathing suit.

(Talk about campaign lies. How many women voted for Romney with the reasonable expectation that he'd attend to his gubernatorial duties shirtless, treating us to daily six-pack shots, only to find that since taking office he's made a habit of appearing in public fully clothed? Read my abs: No more nude shots.)

Meanwhile, the Cambridge Community Television calendar, which is due out this summer - I can hardly wait - taps into another disturbing trend: regular people (i.e. those with a BMI index not suited for print) posing nude in order to raise money for some good cause.

The fund-raising calendar fad started in 1999, when a bunch of middle-aged British women - ``the Ladies of Rylstone'' - took it all off for a good cause. Since then, sagging men and women of all ages and nationalities have stripped to raise money - and who knows where it will lead?

I, for one, don't want to see a ``Men of the White House'' calendar featuring Dick Cheney - out of hiding for his closeup - or a nude Ari Fleischer posing behind a lectern (not giving anything away, as usual).

So, here's an idea: In the same way the government pays farmers not to grow certain crops, the citizenry could offer to pay off anyone who threatened to strip for a good cause.

With everything going on in the world - the looming war, the threat of miniskirts - when we need to know the date, can't we just look at a pastoral Vermont scene or an impressionist landscape?