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Thursday, February 11. 2010

Truly a Derriere Faux Pas

Joy of Joys! The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is on the stands! Millions upon millions of boys, ages 8 to 80, were looking forward — nay — were waiting at their local convenience stores for the magazine to appear in the racks of their favorite convenience stores.

This is funny: there are chains that will sell the S.I. Swimsuit Issue, as well as the “Laddie” magazines like Maxim and FHM, but they won’t sell Playboy or other men’s magazines that feature entirely nude models. The hypocrisy is incredible. No matter, we’re looking forward to the Swimsuit Issue here!

Just to gain access to all of the Sports Illustrated online content, I may subscribe to the magazine. I used to do that, read maybe two or three issues a year, just so’s I could, in one day, download all the Swimsuit Issue content. Sadly, it’s a lesson in futility I’ve had to learn year after year because, let’s face it, looking at really hot women in swimsuits and coyly covering up their mammary glands is really just a tease. Heck, do a Google search for naked women and voila! You might even find a few of the Swimsuit Issue models sans clothing.

This is funny: after all these years, over 40 (I think), people still protest the magazine with the same screams of horror people were using when the magazine first published a Swimsuit Issue. Here’s a clue to all those who shake and jerk in a frenzy when the Swimsuit Issue hits the news stands: it isn’t going away. It’s the magazine’s most popular issue.

Time Warner, the parent company of the magazine, puts more money, time and effort into that issue than any other because it sells and, more importantly, it sells subscriptions to the magazine. Probably to guys like me who will subscribe just to get the online content the TW suits hold back just so we will subscribe. Business is business and they figured this out.

After a few years I stopped subscribing because the subscriber-only content was hardly more … err … revealing … than the “free” content. In fact, over the years, the Swimsuit Issue has become more conservative with the attire. The zenith of their swimsuit models has to be Cheryl Tiegs in that fishnet one-piece that caused such a stir over 30 years ago.

Sports Illustrated could cause a great (and welcome) blast of subscribers and protestors if they had more revealing photos of their body painted models. Just my humble suggestion, but I doubt that will happen because the trend has been to be a little more conservative. But, if they saved those photos for those of us who subscribe for the content —and offered them in extremely high resolution — I bet their subscriptions would go through the roof. I’m just saying.

Super model Brooklyn Decker is the cover model, a big deal for models. She was on Late Night With David Letterman and was … not quite as entertaining as Jennifer Garner, who had the two segments prior to Decker’s appearance. She is married to tennis star Andy Roddick, for any of you who might harbor any unrequited fantasies. This is just a guess, I don’t really know, Decker is not only 30+ years younger than me, but she’s likely to be at least four inches taller than me. Super models always leave me feeling short. Any fantasies I might harbor for a S.I. Swimsuit model get dashed as soon as I read their stats.

“Stats,” you ask? Age, height, weight and measurements. It is a sports magazine after all. There has to be stats in every issue.

What’s truly humorous about the tumult over the publication of the Swimsuit Issue is the inclusion of swimsuit photos of über skier Lindsey Vonn. Not just Vonn, but fellow Winter Olympic athletes Hannah Teter (snowboarding), Clair Bidez (snowboarding) and Lacy Schnoor (skiing).

The controversy over Lindsey Vonn began with the February 5, 2010 issue that featured Vonn on the cover, in her skiing gear and the downhill tuck speed skiers crouch in when they’re flying down a mountain at about 70 miles per hour.
 I’m afraid to sled down a hill at 20 mph!
 Hell, I don’t even like going near snow!

The problem with the photo? It’s too sexually suggestive. If we were only kidding. I guess seeing the fine contour of Vonn’s fine, fine derriere was too much for the puritans of the land. Sports Illustrated has featured male athletes in similar poses. And who can forget Michael Phelps — and Mark Spitz all those years ago — gold medals around their necks, on the cover shirtless. No cries of horror over that type of display.

But, if it’s a woman athlete we need to adopt different standards because, golly, it would be objectifying to show them in a pose that might suggest something sexual. Or, equally pernicious, women are the Biblical founts of seduction, temptation and ultimately evil and we need to hysterically avoid any displays that might tempt men to commit evil acts, like masturbating! Ah bullshit.

Women’s figure skating, for instance, will be very sexual for a lot of men. Scantily clad women twirling around the TV screen? But, the broadcasters will succumb to the puritan pressures of a few and crop the camera shots so as not to be too revealing of the women’s bodies. They do it every time women’s figure skating — or gymnastics — is shown on television. Here in the United States anyway.

The trouble with that is, when someone is figure skating, their entire body is part of the routine and something very technical and/or beautiful that is part of that routine is being lost to the viewers because in the U.S. we have this nonsensical notion about sex and the female body.
 Which brings up another issue: there is no women’s ski jumping competition in the Olympics because somehow making ski jumps affects those “female” parts on women. Really.
 A few years ago the president of the International Ski Jumping Federation, Gian-Franco Kasper, said it could be damaging to female parts. His words: “It’s like jumping down, let’s say, about two meters on the ground about a thousand times a year which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.”
 The IOC has a lot of better excuses now, none of which hold water when men’s events are put to those standards, but this is a whole different can of worms from the one’s surrounding Lindsey Vonn and her cover photo on Sports Illustrated. But it does show a consistent bias and attitude towards women competing in sports.

Friends in Canada tell me that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation doesn’t crop the camera shots or put up message banners across the bottom of the TV screen to block what might be shown, as their American counterparts do here.

Back to Lindsey Vonn. My hope is, after these Olympics she will pose for Playboy as Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard did after the 2004 Summer Olympics. Now that was a celebrity photo spread worth viewing! As for Vonn’s cover photo, I didn’t realize it had sexual overtones until critics pointed it out. That’s when I noticed just how fine a derriere Vonn has in that suit!
 Sadly, Vonn may miss competing in these Olympics due to a shin injury.

The real crime with that particular cover: look at the positioning of Vonn’s fine, fine derriere in relation to the words “Sports Illustrated.”

“PU?” That just kills any boner a guy might get admiring Lindsey Vonn’s fine form. Someone at Sports Illustrated needs to be smacked upside the head for that faux pas. Eh, I’ll just page through the photos of Vonn and her fellow Olympians in their bikinis — after I fill out the form to order a subscription to the magazine. Jeez, I’m a sucker through and through.

Posted by Tim Forkes in Media Madness at 08:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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