Thigh, Eagles, Thigh

“WOULD YOU MIND DOING MY BACK?” Danielle asks ­Lauren shyly. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, but the Mexican sun still beats down on the beach at Dreams Tulum, the resort where the Eagles cheerleaders are shooting their steamy annual calendar, and all of the girls are hot and sticky. Lauren rubs the suntan lotion on her palms, then slowly smooths it all over Danielle’s back, running her hands across the brunette’s creamy shoulders, along the curve of her waist, down to where the line of her bikini meets the small of her back. The heat is palpable. Slowly, Lauren leans toward Danielle, her hair softly tickling her tan, sand-flecked shoulders, intent in her eyes. Her succulent lips part.

“Did you finish your psychology paper?” she asks, handing back the SPF 30.

CONTRARY TO THE SUGGESTIVE IMAGE on the cover of the new Eagles Cheerleaders 2007/2008 calendar — five barely-clad women entwined in the sand, staring seductively at the camera — there wasn’t much girl-on-girl action at the photo shoot in Mexico this past May. Which doesn’t mean that the upwards of 25,000 teenage boys (and grown men who act like teenage boys) who buy the calendar this year won’t imagine otherwise.

“Did you get to have any fun in Mexico?” WYSP’s Vinnie the Crumb will later leer at the party the Eagles hold for the calendar’s official unveiling, at the NovaCare Complex. “It wasn’t all business, was it?”

“It wasn’t all business,” one of the cover models says, with an embarrassed smile. “We had a lot of fun.”

“There’s a lot of giggling going on up here,” The Crumb winks at the audience. “I think I’ve hit on a touchy subject.”

I was in Mexico with the Eagles cheerleaders, and to the best of my knowledge, there were no hookups. No Girls Gone Wild boob-flashing. Not even any late-night OD’ing on piña coladas (hello, calories!) at the resort bar. This last thing I know for sure, because late at night I was at the resort bar, and I was alone. Indeed, the cheerleaders who weren’t cramming to finish papers — the trip coincided with finals week — were in bed by nine, then in the gym by six a.m., at practice from eight to noon, and by early afternoon either enthusiastically engaged in hotel-sponsored water sports or rotating under the sun in neat, symmetrical rows, like so many Wawa hot dogs.

As it turns out, the Eagles cheerleaders are kind of, well, anal, and not in the Jenna Jameson sense. As I hung around them for several months through the audition process, in Mexico and in Philadelphia, it quickly became clear that they are not — let’s just say it — wanton sluts, but hyper-focused women who are as perfectionist about everything they do as they are about their hair, skin, nail care and workout regimes.