Yao Chen, the first Chinese United Nation Refugee Agency goodwill ambassador is among the notable women of the 2016 Pirelli calendar.

Shot by the incomparable Annie Leibowitz, this year's Pirelli Calendar includes 13 women that were chosen for their achievements and voices.

Among the 13 women of "outstanding professional, social, cultural, sporting and artistic accomplishment", Yao Chen is the very first Chinese image on the forward of the calendar.

Yao Chen has over 70 million social-media followers in China, which puts her in the very top tier of global pop-culture stars. She said she felt honored to be one of the thirteen.

Yao is a film and TV actress whose first postings appeared in 2009, when Weibo, (a Chinese social media platform comparable to Twitter) was launched and uses her platform to express ideas on hot topics.

Since 1964, the Italian tire company has released a yearly calendar to 20,000 VIPs, including musicians, celebrities, and royalty. And most of those calendars included hyper-sexualized images of the world's most conventionally attractive women.

More than 50 years later, a change has finally come: Leibowitz and Pirelli selected a group of diverse women, most of whom are fully dressed and presented in a compellingly powerful way, represented first and foremost by their achievements over their bodies.

2016's issue features 13 women of "outstanding professional, social, cultural, sporting and artistic accomplishment" who were shot by the doyenne of photography, Annie Leibovitz, in her New York studio in July.