The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, costing a steep $7.99 for a printed copy, sells over a million copies at newsstands each year. This is more than 10 times what a traditional weekly edition of Sports Illustrated sells — the kind that actually features athletes, statistics and sports news. What started as a five-page insert 50 years ago has since made Time Inc. over $1 billion in revenue. This year’s copy was released on Feb. 18.
The 50th anniversary of the special edition has prompted more controversy than usual, given the company’s decision to include Barbies in swimsuits among the pages. Critics typically scorn the magazine for depicting unrealistic ideals given the slender, scantily-clad models that span the edition. Barbie takes these unhealthy expectations to a whole new level.
This year, non-subscribing consumers can also purchase the magazine for their iPhones for $7.99, earning the capability to flip through all of the images and play with the view, zoom and background. For an additional $2, customers can also buy access to the last two years’ photos.
Economically, running this edition every year makes sense. But the magazine’s purpose is to cover sports. Women wearing bikinis is a stretch.
It bothers us that nearly-naked women are being sold as the only content in a sports magazine and that almost every other week of the year the cover depicts exclusively male athletes. Looking back at the past three years of covers, we were only able to find three covers that featured a female athlete, not fan or cheerleader, on the cover.
While Hope Solo, women’s soccer goalie, and Serena Williams, American tennis star, certainly earned this front-page honor, there are plenty of other female athletes that deserved this recognition as well in the past three years. Beach volleyball duo Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings, golfer Michelle Wie, NASCAR Racer Danica Patrick, tennis player Maria Sharapova and alpine skier Lindsey Vonn are recognizable names in the sports world. Their athletic accomplishments fitted with their athletic physique make them perfect candidates to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
The majority of cover stories portray football and basketball players, either professional or collegiate, as these are sports that broadly appeal to the male-dominated readership. There is no excuse for the fact that, aside from the Swimsuit Edition, female athletes are rarely featured on the cover.
From women who reject the portrayal of unrealistic Barbie doll figures, or in this case literally the doll herself, to the men who can’t wait to get home to peruse the pages, this issue generates a lot of conversation about women. But not about female athletes.
Jimmy Kimmel recently had the three cover models on his show. Kimmel should instead celebrate the accomplishments of female athletes instead of asking the trio about their part in making this anxiously awaited issue.
For Sports Illustrated subscribers, the edition will land in their mailboxes this week just the same as every other week. But this may be the only issue for the other hundreds of thousands of people who buy this special edition “read” all year.
Women’s sports are on the rise, and this should be better reflected in sports media. As one of the top-selling sports magazines, Sports Illustrated can increase awareness of women’s sports by better balancing its coverage. By the time most of you read this today, thousands and thousands of swimsuit editions have already been torn through. Sure there are women on the cover, but the reason they got there has nothing to do with their athletic prowess. Their thin bodies could never withstand the wear and tear of true athletes.
