The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue has just hit newsstands. Its glossy cover lasciviously displays teen-aged model Kate Upton in what People magazine described as an “itty-bitty bikini.”
SI’s editors insist that its annual swimsuit issue – which always ranks as its best-seller – is tastefully done. But the reality is that SI is peddling soft core pornography. Its models are only slightly less sexualized than those that appear in Playboy.
In fact, SI is in many respects worst than Playboy.
Hugh Hefner’s skin magazine makes no pretense to be anything other than pornographic, notwithstanding the articles that fill the pages between the magazine’s nude photo spreads.
SI pretends that its swimsuit issue has something to do with sports. But closest connection covergirl Uptonhas to sports is that she is rumored to be dating New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez.
Yes, the magazine does include several actual female athletes, including Alex Morgan, a member of theU.S.women’s soccer team, Natalie Coughlin, an Olympic swimmer, and Natalie Gulbis, the LPGA tour player.
The three legit sportswomen did not pose in itty-bitty swimsuits like Upton. No they were photographed nude, with only coats of body paint affording them any modesty.
What particularly disturbs is that, unlike most other soft core porn – be it in magazines, at the video store or on pay-per-view television – SI’s swimsuit issue is readily accessible to under-age boys.
For at least some of those boys, the sexualized image of teen-aged Kate in her itty-bitty bikini will stimulate an even more prurient sexual appetite: For hard-core pornography. For topless bars and all-nude strip clubs. For escort services and sex-for-hire.
SI is exploiting young women like Upton, while cultivating unhealthy sexual appetites in its young male readers.
The magazine is doing the dirty work of the sex industry.
lol your upset about a magazine filled with athletic girls in bikinis but you don’t care that any kid with an iPhone can turn his search engine on private and look at any kind of porn he wants to and also looking at si I don’t think is going to cause a young boy to hire a prostitute.
SI’s soft-core porn, masquerading as a swimsuit issue, is a gateway to the hard-core porn. The world condones it. God does not.
How dare anyone use sexuality in the form of images of women in bikinis to sell something. What have SI been doing for the last 48 years.
Btw your argument in the 9th paragraph suffers from a ‘slippery slope’ rhetoric. You are assuming than seeing Kate will stimulate boys’ sexual appetites which will lead to one thing, then another thing and then another. There is no evidence to this.
Using this type of argument I could say that SI are providing an excellent service by publishing the swimsuit issue as it satisfies boys’ sexual appetites. This fulfils their desires which allows them to spend more time studying religion and thereby quickening their conversion to Islam.