Covered Girls
National Review Online, February 26 2001
Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue is a ritual of the American mid-winter, more predictable than Punxsutawney Phil, more tacky than the Grammys. It is a sell-out on the newsstands, it is an MTV special, it is a swaggering, high-fiving conversation round the office water cooler. The whole spectacle is also a national embarrassment, a shaming carnival that degrades its participants and humiliates the rest of their gender. I refer, of course, to men. Guys, can we all calm down? The swimsuit issue is terminally tame, grotesquely genteel, incorrigibly coy. Amy, Heidi, Molly, and the rest of them are just Gibson Girls with fewer clothes, wholesomely sexy, obscenely unobtainable. Noting the proliferation of far more overtly sexual imagery all over today's America, NRO's Dave Shiflett commented that the publication of the swimsuit issue should generate about as much excitement "as the arrival of a can of Miller Lite at the Jack Daniels Distillery."
It is a logical conclusion, and yet it is not the case. Miller time, it seems, is still a big deal. The swimsuit issue sells 4.5 million copies. This makes it the largest-selling edition of any magazine in the country.
So is this, as it seems, yet another example of the transformation of the American man into the sort of feeble creature traditionally seen when Alan Alda is on television? Has the old wolf been house-trained, changed into a lapdog able only to respond to the call of the mild? Perhaps. The fact that this year's issue features an ad warning that "one in five victims of osteoporosis is male" is not encouraging. Say what you want, but that is an old-lady disease, at least until the time that I am in a plaster cast.
Fortunately, there is another explanation for the success of the swimsuit issue, one that may allow the male sex to salvage at least some self-respect. Could it be that in the Flynt era the peekaboo unavailability of the SI model carries its own, genuine, erotic punch? If you live in the distillery, maybe Miller Lite is an exciting and refreshing sensation after all.
Certainly it seems that SI's publishers understand this. Yes, it is true that of the roughly 75 swimsuit photographs, about a fifth are topless (it was a tough job researching this article), but the nation's nipple mavens will be disappointed. Decency is defended by a series of strategically placed arms, couches, towels, beads, seaweed, and NFL players. Clinging wet shirts prove a little less effective despite a number of brave attempts.
On the whole, however, what SI is marketing, and, clearly, very successfully, is an image of "don't touch" perfection, something that would be damaged by the removal of that last, tantalizing scrap of gauze. These are not the girls next door of the centerfold mags. Even the photo locations are far away, Tunisia, Italy, Macedonia, Siegfried and Roy's house. For anyone who actually reads it, the text of the magazine reinforces this message of distance between the model and the, er, watcher.
In one article, "The Babe Goddesses," the writer compares these women to the deities of antiquity (there is a vaguely Mediterranean theme throughout the issue). He is no Homer, but the warning is clear, "Every red-blooded Greek and Roman stud...knew that goddesses, however desirable, were off-limits."
So we are left with two interpretations. The men of America either no longer know what good pornography is, or they have rediscovered the appeal of elusiveness. Either way, the women of America should be thrilled. They are not.
Reacting to the swimsuit issue with their customary good humor, feminists call each year for boycotts and protests. When it comes to ocean-shore beauty, they are on a mission — to bring an end to it. To the folks at Americans for Fair Sports Journalism "the message of the swimsuit issue is that no matter what women may accomplish in their lives, they ultimately exist to sexually entertain men." Ah yes, that message. To Laurel Davis, authoress of The Swimsuit Issue and Sport; Hegemonic Masculinity in Sports Illustrated, the magazine is able to attract buyers "by creating a climate of hegemonic masculinity." This is not, we are led to believe, a good thing.
Mind you, Ms. Davis, an associate professor at Springfield College, Massachusetts, who cites her professional interests as "sports, media, race, gender, class, and sexual orientation," understands that blanket condemnation is not always the correct response. There was, for example, the Tyra Banks crisis. Ms. Banks, who is African-American, graced the cover of the issue a few years back. Was this a good thing or bad? Should SI be an equal-opportunity exploiter? Speaking to the Boston Globe at the time, the associate professor seemed to sit on the fence, "It was both somewhat positive and somewhat critiquable."
The problem with this sort of talk, however, is that is not confined to academia. The idiocy of ivory-tower feminism has long since escaped into the suburbs, where its poisonous sense of entitlement, sexual paranoia, and deep, deep puritanism has found a natural, and receptive, audience. The viewers of TV's Lifetime now believe that they know that "objectification" is another male crime to be condemned alongside the rapes, infidelity, murders, and child abuse that are the staple of their channel's entertainment.
In such an environment, it can be no surprise that the soccer matriarchy now takes a very dim view of the SI girls. To see this, you only had to look at the disgusted expression on the face of a very different goddess, Katie Couric, during a recent edition of NBC's Today Show. What was wrong? Had someone lit a cigarette? Was Bob Dole in the room? No, it was something even worse. Prim Katie was having to introduce a segment on the swimsuit issue. A cringing Matt Lauer looked apologetic: he felt the Couric pain. So who was left to defend the spot, and, with a benign chuckle, hint that, why yes, he was looking forward to seeing the models? Step forward Al Roker, weatherman and sage, a suitably safe figure to handle this toxic topic.
What a sad state of affairs. Checking out a pretty girl, across a room, or on a page, is one of the oldest, and more harmless, of masculine pleasures. Let's face it, men do have an interest in the visual (although the idea that women do not is, I suspect, a myth passed around to reassure the beer belly and Rogaine set). The usual argument that such an interest is evidence of emotional retardation or a desire to turn women into objects is, to borrow the language of the sociology faculty, nothing more than an intolerant assault on the nature of male sexuality. The attack on SI's lissome lovelies is part of this process. It is yet another reminder that live and let live is not an acceptable option to the feminist militants who are setting far too much of this country's agenda.
And that looks a lot like hegemony to me.