The History of SI Swimsuit Edition
In the declining years of print media, few magazines can count on any issue to bring them out of the red and into at least a little profit. It's like the Christmas shopping season for retailers. For nearly three months store owners, from the little, independently operated stores to the mega-chain stores count on Christmas shoppers to put their bottom line in black.
A few magazines have similar strategies, like "Time's" Person of the Year, but most especially, the Swimsuit Issue of "Sports Illustrated" (SI).
One of the most controversial magazine issues of al time, the SI Swimsuit issue never fails to garner rabid fans and rabid detractors every year. Moralists and feminists decry it, for differing reasons, but young boys to old men can't wait to get their hands on another copy and wait anxiously for mid-February to roll around so they can once again revel in all that feminine beauty.
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The Beginning
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For one of the January 1964 issues, the editors were looking for something interesting and different to fill space between the end of the professional football season and the start of the professional baseball season. The editor of Sports Illustrated at that time, Andre Laguerre, asked an unknown fashion reporter to put together a swimsuit feature, including a beautiful woman for the cover. That reporter, Jule Campbell, took the assignment and ran with it. Today, she is one of the most powerful people in the fashion world.
It hasn't been an easy ride though. Almost from the beginning, the issue generated controversy. Sports purists and moralists alike thought it inappropriate for a sports publication to feature women in bathing apparel as if it were a seedy men's magazine. Playboy was just 10 years old at the time and Christian women could still be found picketing store that sold it. The "Sports Illustrated" Swimsuit Issue added to their outrage.
Parents and teachers objected, as did religious leaders, and the growing feminist movement saw it as yet another tool of men to objectify women, presenting women as products for consumption in a male-dominated world.
None of that mattered though as the special issue gained popularity with each passing year. When women saw model Babette March on that first Swimsuit Issue in a white bikini, two-piece bathing suits became acceptable apparel for the beach and pool. And from then on, being featured on the cover was a very special designation, and models today consider it the most important note in their resumes.
Innovation and Controversy
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One of the innovations of Jule Campbell was to print the name of the model with her photos, a practice unheard of at the time. Within 15 years men and boys alike knew the names of the models, looking forward each year to a repeat performance by their favorite girls: Christie Brinkley, Barbara Carrera, Carol Alt and the now famous (infamous) Cheryl Tiegs.
In 1978 Tiegs appeared in a fishnet one-piece suit that left her nipples fully exposed. She was an instant star and was recognized everywhere.
If folklore is to be believed, that particular photo wasn't meant to appear in the magazine. The editors were aghast as hundreds of subscribers canceled their subscriptions. But it was all just a ploy. Years earlier, the magazine had taken to printing the hate mail generated by the special issue, and 1978 was no different, except that the volume of the hate mail had increased.
Like Playboy before them, the publishers and editors of Sports Illustrated used the notoriety and controversy to fuel interest in their magazine, and that business strategy is still used today, although it is much less controversial than in those beginning decades.
With all the heat generated by the Cheryl Tiegs photo, the editors had to make the issue seem hotter with each passing year, yet not cross that boundary from (somewhat) wholesome feminine sexuality to full-on adult entertainment. They wanted the issue to remain legally viewable by teens and titillating enough for adult men, but not so much that they might get into deep trouble with their wives if the sons were caught perusing its pages. -
Sex Sells
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Sex sells, even if it's PG-rated--especially if it's PG-rated. It's no surprise that at the time the "Sports Illustrated" Swimsuit Issue made its debut, National Football League teams began featuring all-women cheerleading squads. The Baltimore Colts were the first to do so, but it was the Dallas Cowboys franchise that first gave the cheerleaders the skimpy and sexy outfits they are known for today.
The sexual revolution, first started by the publication of "Playboy" magazine in December 1953, paved the way for the arrival and global acceptance of the "Sports Illustrated" Swimsuit Issue. As the sexual mores of religion began to fall away from our culture, the SI Swimsuit Issue grew in popularity and soon became a rite of passage for teenage boys. Men ordered and renewed their subscriptions to the magazine based on what Swimsuit Issue paraphernalia was offered as enticement to subscribe, most treasured being the calendars.
The Swimsuit Issue Today
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Today, "Sports Illustrated" is owned by Time Warner, Inc., and the magazine's website, first put online in 1996, offers pages and pages of photos, including the celebrated body painting features. If you subscribe to the magazine, you get access to all of the Swimsuit Issues' contents.
The Swimsuit Issue Continues
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Jule Campbell, as of 2009, is still the driving force behind the Swimsuit Issue. In the past 15 years or so, the magazine has featured female athletes in the Swimsuit Issue, wives of sports superstars and, in 2007, in an issue celebrating music, singer Beyoncé Knowles adorned the cover.
Despite the continued complaints from men and women alike, the "Sports Illustrated" Swimsuit Issue isn't going away. It isn't even losing popularity. In 2007, that one issue brought in $35 million in advertising revenue.
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