The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue

February 20, 2004

When I looked through this year's swimsuit issue, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Forty years ago Sports Illustrated launched the swimsuit issue to boost sales and help men fight the winter doldrums. You see, nothing bucks up our spirits like beautiful women in skimpy, but tasteful, swim wear.

And as we looked forward to the swimsuit edition every year, feminists went berserk. They said it exploited women, and it did. They said it was wrong for men to view women as mere objects, and it was. But what angered them most was that the Sports Illustrated models always went on to fame and fortune just for being gorgeous.

Well, a lot has happened in the past 40 years. Men, who once had a firm sense of what they were, are now dolling themselves up the way women used to. Many women are now talking rougher and acting tougher than their new-age-sensitive-male counterparts.

By 1998, this confusion finally foisted itself on the swimsuit issue. After 35 years of publishing ONLY gorgeous women in bikinis, a woman took over the issue's editorial duties. She was a former editor of Glamour, a women's magazine. And, boy, did she change things that year.

I had to leaf through 42 pages before I found a single photo of a beautiful woman. Why? Because the editor thought we cared more about the equator, the sports old men play there, and the biography of some high-fashion New York photographer twit. She also featured five television weatherwomen, then had the audacity to NOT show them in swimsuits.

In the following years, the swimsuit issue was still way off the mark. The models were skinny and bony. The photography was bizarre. Its artsy-fartsy angles obscured, rather than celebrated, the women we bought the magazine to look at.

I've been worrying about the state of this cultural icon since 1998, so I was shocked when I picked up this year's issue. Sport's Illustrated got it just right.

The front cover displays the gorgeous Veronica Varekova, holding her top in her hand. It promises 10 pages of body painting (that's nude women coated in colored oil!), 35 amazing models, and a "Hall of Fame" feature on Cheryl Tiegs, Tyra Banks and other beauties of old. Best of all, it features Anna Kournikova, the smoking-hot retired tennis player.

Yowsa!

When I opened the magazine, I was overcome with even more joy. The shots are large and clear. No artsy-fartsy junk. All 35 models are gorgeous and curvy. The body-painting photos are stunning. And when I got to the photo of 56-year-old Cheryl Tiggs, tears formed in my eyes. She's more gorgeous now than she ever was.

Another incredible feature displays Michelle Lombardo, who won a nationwide "Fresh Face" contest. She says that modeling agencies didn't know what to do with her because she was too full-figured. Like there is such a thing. Sports Illustrated knew exactly what do to, and it involves a couple of string bikinis and the gratitude of millions of men.

I was so overwhelmed at this point, I barely had strength to go to Anna Kournikova's photos, but I struggled on. Let me tell you this. God exists and He speaks Russian.

I carefully examined every page of the 2004 swimsuit issue, and even the advertisements were nearly perfect. There were masculine ads for high-performance cars, trucks and tires. Other ads hawked beer, booze and cigarettes. Wendy's and McDonald's even advertised juicy double cheeseburgers, which, I'm pretty sure, are illegal now.

I could find only one downside in the whole issue, a story written by singer Jimmy Buffet. Now I love Jimmy Buffet but his goofy story about trying to catch a fish in the Virgin Islands eats up six pages of precious ink - pages that should be filled with scantily-clad women.

Hey, Jimmy, the swimsuit issue is back in all of its brutally honest splendor. Nobody has time to read your article when Anna and Cheryl and Michelle are calling.

Maybe Glamour might publish it.

Tom Purcell

DISCUSS THIS IN THE FORUM!