Book Notes: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 2007

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, the Year of Our Lord 2007

Let's be absolutely clear about this: I did not read the Swimsuit Issue, not one word, so no one give me grief on this. I only looked at the pictures.

And what did I see? Well, we'd better put this behind the jump.

1. Before I saddle up my high horse and get on it, I should fess up and say this annual Sports Illustrated edition made the freeze of the New England winters of my youth much more bearable. Back in the day, when sexual innuendo and scantily-clad bodies were not something that showed up on commercials during baseball games, to see a woman wearing a bikini, especially the beautiful women who found their way into SI, was a pretty inspiring event. My pals and I would pass the issue around, and photos today that aren't worth much more than a glance would, in those days, elicit a genuine "wow." Men my age can remember where they were when that shot of Cheryl Tiegs in a fishnet bathing suit came out. (No links; try a little company called Google if you want to find it.) It sounds so quaint now, but back in the day, the very idea of an annual pictorial of women in bikinis (or fishnets) was actually quite a noteworthy, controversial, and even revolutionary event. Until a few other nascent sports magazines started doing the same thing many years later (and before the internet), SI had the field to itself, much as it had serious sports journalism to itself. The only equivalent event I could hypothesize for today would be (if there were no internet) to subscribe to some high-brow literary magazine, and then once a year Playboy or what have you comes in the mail. We boys couldn't believe we could get away with this, with our parents no less renewing our subscription as an annual Christmas present. Needless to say, we watched the late January mail deliveries pretty closely.

2. Now I'll be honest in saying that, in the many years since TSLP's legendary youth, I've barely given the annual issue more than a glance. It's not that pictures of beautiful women wearing the barest of bathing suits don't interest me, it's just that I can hardly take my morning turn through my regular websites or watch evening sports on television without being exposed to lots of women dressed to hit the beach. I open SI's web page every day, and every day a new image of one of SI's bikini models jumps out at me from the sidebar. I seldom give her more than a glance, if I see her at all (TSLP has very bad eyesight). Maybe I'm reflecting my age, and a younger man might find every new image of another and another and another bikinied model to be endlessly fascinating. I suspect, however, it's all now kind of boring for most of us. Even bathing-suit beauty has a saturation point, and I reached it about twenty years ago.

3. So it was with a bit of nostalgic curiosity that I decided to page through this year's SI swimsuit issue. I was shocked. My stomach turned. I weep for our country and our future. It wasn't the models or the bikinis; it was an advertisement. I grasped the thick 2007 swimsuit issue in my hands, let it fall open, and there before me was a two-page picture of an entirely nude Burt Reynolds, circa 1980, with his forearm carefully placed to hide what was left of his private parts. Just Burt, nothing else. Probably some company name somewhere; I didn't study the page to find it. Does SI have any idea how that photo made me and presumably millions of other American males feel? There we were, opening SI's famous swimsuit issue, eagerly ready to assess the 2007 version of Cheryl Tiegs, and the magazine falls open to a naked man, so hirsute I'd call his body hair a pelt, just sitting there grinning at us. Sorry to play the heterosexual card here, but heterosexual men (at least this one) do not look at other men as an object of beauty, and have no desire to look upon naked men in any context. Yet Burt the Bear was the most nude person in the entire magazine (at least the swimsuit models kept on their bikini bottoms). It's hard to describe a more disheartening moment of confusion when a man, expecting to ogle nearly naked women, sees an entirely naked man. SI should be ashamed of itself, publishing such images.

4. After I got up off the floor, I was able to look through the rest of the magazine at the pictures of the models. Again, perhaps I'm just revealing my age, but I found the experience on the whole somewhat boring. I flipped rapidly through to the end. After the Cheryl Tiegs picture (found it yet?), there's really nothing more that a more or less reputable magazine can do. The photos at this point are only a couple of inches of material (or a small movement of a hand) away from a flat-out Playboy pictorial. There's nowhere else for SI to go. Literally. So it's obvious that the magazine is trying some twists (body paint) and turns (celebrity models, like Beyonce) to keep the interest going. It's a dying franchise, I would think, although I'm told this issue is SI's annual sales leader. It might sell, but it's boring. And (Burt Reynolds aside) it was difficult at times to discern which of the photos were SI's and which were advertisements. The ads were just as racy as the rest of the magazine. The fact that those same ads presumably appear in other SI issues or other magazines speaks volumes about the degree to which our common, everyday experience has caught up to the former infamy of the SI annual.

5. One small joy of the SI experience back in the day was the apparent glut of letters SI would receive (many of which were published) of the "cancel my subscription, I have children at home" variety. TSLP has children at home too. I will admit I more or less hide the annual swimsuit issue until a safe place can be found for it deep within the recycle receptacle. (One year it disappeared, only to reappear months later in the closet of my youngest. At least he has good taste.) Even as a kid I thought the letter-writers were overreacting to more or less harmless fun, but then again, I always made sure my mom never got near the issue. Now that I'm a parent, and the photos are more racy than ever, I don't feel too protective in keeping the SI Swimsuit away from the boys, but I don't feel I have to cancel the magazine either. I suspect, and I'm not happy about this, that my children are as inured to sexualized images of nearly naked models as am I. Thank you, television commercial producers, thank you very much. I hope you can spend your money in hell.

6. Looking back (figuratively speaking), nearly all the photos of yesteryear consisted, for the most part, of models actually wearing a bikini that plausibly could have served as beachwear, even on the breezy New England coasts where we took our annual week at the shore. The 2007 bikinis by comparison do not strike me as very practical stock. Seldom did the models even bother putting on the tops (if they were any), relying on a hand or wave of hair to keep SI from requiring a brown-paper wrapper. But without a top, and with the slimmest of bikini bottoms, little of the actual bikini was visible. What's the use of putting a woman in a tiny white bikini bottom and then making mention that the bikini was designed by some guy in Italy? Okay, I guess there's a use, but certainly not for the swimsuit. The Swimsuit issue is not very useful as a purchasing catalog.

7. So I promise (Mrs. TSLP) that I won't look again at the SI Annual Swimsuit Issue, at least not for another ten years or so. I wonder what could possibly change. I can't see where else the magazine could go, short of the Burt Reynolds direction. The women can't wear less, the bikinis can't be smaller, the paint can't be slopped on anywhere else. Really, what's next, other than the ground already inhabited by Playboy and the world of pornography? We'll see.

8. I can't wait for the 2017 issue to find out.