The Swimsuit Issue

It’s February. Valentine’s Day… Whatever. President’s Day… Great, another week I have to worry about childcare less than a month and a half after the kids were off for the holidays. Super Bowl… I think the current weather in New England is evidence of how the Higher Power feels about the outcome of that. My dad’s birthday… Always an exercise in finding an appropriate card for a man who doesn’t golf, fish, or grill, but rides a bad-ass Harley and loves cats. Most of all February is the month I associate with the days finally starting to get longer… Sometimes I actually leave the office when there is still light in the sky! Until this year, I had all but forgotten about another February occurrence… The annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

Sports Illustrated started publishing the Swimsuit Issue in 1964 to drive magazine sales during the typically slow time between sports seasons. Apparently it worked because, more than half a century later, the issue is still flying off newsstands. I saw somewhere on the internet (so it must be true, right?) that the 2013 issue sold more than 800,000 copies. Whether or not that figure is accurate, the thing clearly must be making money – both in sales and advertising – or they wouldn’t still be publishing it.

This is going to sound obtuse, but I don’t really understand why the swimsuit issue is so popular. I mean, I guess I do, on a really obvious level – it’s the old ‘sex sells’ axiom. But these days? Isn’t there this thing called Google, where, if one wanted to look at pictures of nearly naked (or even completely naked!) women, one could simply type in “naked women,” press “enter,” and magically have access to an abundance of the desired images. For free.

Why is this magazine still selling? Maybe partly because Sports Illustrated always seems to make sure there is some controversy that gets whipped up and talked about ad nauseum. They put Barbie on the cover (objectifying!). They’ve shot the photos in exotic locales and used people native to those places as kitschy props (racist!). (Apparently nothing says sexy like a bikini-clad model on a giant sand dune with a spear-toting, loin-cloth-wearing African in the background.) And of course, there’s always the controversy around how revealing the swimsuits are.

My introduction to this cultural phenomenon was in 1989 – the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. Instead of being at the beach wearing a bikini for most of that summer, I was hanging out around the house, taking care of the tiny Siberian husky puppy I begged my parents for. She was too little to be left alone for long periods of time, so I parked myself at home and watched a whole bunch of bad TV. One of the things I saw was an HBO special called “The Making of the Sports Illustrated 25^th Anniversary Swimsuit Issue” featuring Carol Alt, Rachel Hunter, Kathy Ireland, and Elle Macpherson to name a few of the lovely ladies of the era. It was on a lot, and I watched it a lot. I was confused and oddly transfixed.

I didn’t understand what girls in bikinis had to do with sports, other than that boys liked both. I liked boys, so I felt compelled to watch and to attempt to understand. Plus, the swimsuits were cute and the locations seemed dreamy. Frolicking on a warm, tropical beach in a super fashionable bikini, and getting paid to do it was a nice fantasy compared to my reality of braving the freezing cold water of the Oregon coast in whatever swimsuit the local store carried that year, and then having to race to my minimum wage job at the movie theater.

Despite the repeated viewings and perceived glamour, something about the SI Swimsuit Issue still bugged me. I remember a very specific scene where one of the models – I don’t recall which – joked about how her years of ballet training paid off because she could manage wardrobe changes by balancing on one leg, in a make-shift changing tent, on the sand. I remember thinking it was sad. Sad that her years of hard work – mental, physical, creative – didn’t amount to anything more than standing on a beach and being photographed for a sports magazine that didn’t have anything to do with sports.

Time moved on and so did I; that was the last summer I spent watching TV and, while the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue clearly carried on as well, it was the last time I expended any amount of time caring about or even noticing it. I never could get the phenomenon to make sense into something that seemed right to me, but I don’t need to add my voice (at least in this particular blog post) to the on-going debate about whether the SI Swimsuit Issue (and countless other publications, movies, and advertisements just like it) are objectifying, and therefore hurting, women or celebrating their sexuality. It’s an old debate and one that we don’t appear to be any closer to settling.

I can’t really even remember the last time I noticed the release of the Swimsuit Issue, or any of the fanfare accompanying it. But this year, a new angle caught my attention. I was at the gym working out on the cardio machines located under a bank of TVs. CNN was running a story about this year’s Swimsuit Issue including an ad featuring plus-size (gasp!) model Ashley Graham. This is hardly news – even 30 seconds of it isn’t news. But it went on and on and on. They interviewed Ms. Graham, showed numerous images, and covered it for a good ten minutes. Thankfully, my hands were firmly planted on the heart-rate monitor sensors, because otherwise I probably would have gouged my eyes out.

The tag-line graphic across the bottom of the screen said “Era of the curvy girl” and Ashley Graham actually said, “This is the curvy girl era. This is what we need to be talking about right now.” Really, Ashley Graham? Is it really what we NEED to be talking about right now? Are there not bigger problems facing our world than plus-size models being included in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for body-positivity. Physical beauty is subjective and comes in all shapes and sizes. For one thing, I Googled Ashley Graham’s SI ad (See, I didn’t have to buy the issue!) and I think you’d have trouble finding anyone who would classify her as fat. But what bothers me about these women – larger than typical models – who feel they are outspoken advocates for women and positive body images, is that they are participating in the same body-objectifying activity they claim to be against.

Isn’t touting the “era of the curvy woman” setting waifish women up to feel bad about themselves? Why is it always a zero-sum game on this issue? Let’s just stop talking incessantly about women’s bodies. We don’t talk about men this way. I don’t see CNN running a news story on “the era of the short, round man.” It isn’t suddenly “the year of the receding hairline.”

And it isn’t just a focus on women’s bodies as a whole – curvy or skinny, small or large – our bodies tend to get picked apart into mere pieces. This year’s SI Swimsuit Issue cover girl Hannah Davis told Matt Lauer “it’s the year of the torso.” First of all Hannah, that isn’t your torso. (Bitch, please.) And second, don’t tell Kim Kardashian because I’m pretty sure she’s still working the age of the butt.

I know the Ashley Grahams of the industry are well-intentioned, but continuing to talk about women’s bodies in the same misguided way isn’t doing anyone any good. We need to STOP TALKING about it like this. Can’t women just be women without it being about fat or skinny, or butts or breasts, or a certain era of one or the other? If we really have to “an era” of a single body part, I’d like to nominate the brain. I think it’s time.