The Bocker.com

Like any other red-blooded American, I loved finding Marisa Miller on the cover SI’s 2008 Swimsuit Issue in my mailbox on this cold snowy February afternoon, but I also find it curious and amusing that SI publishes this issue in the first place. Its as though Sports Illustrated wanted to thank all of its devoted readers by developing the only socially accepted smut magazine at the newstand.

The rationale, at least as I understand it, behind releasing a swimsuit issue was for SI to increase magazine sales during the notorious slow sports month of February. Sounds plausible enough, yet it really makes as much sense as Time or GQ publishing a bikini volume during an annually slow segment of the news calendar. When the swimsuit edition came into being in the 1960s, all of these magazines were periodicals aimed at men, so any magazine back then could have used this idea to get a sales bump.

The key though, for SI to be able to release a magazine that just showed off hot babes is to create an issue that rivals any fashion magazine. If its done in a lowbrow way, SI would lose credibility as an actual source of journalism.

Sports Illustrated go out and get the best and most accomplished models to appear in the magazine. They get swimwear from the most well-known designers in the world. They use their photographic prowess to take classy pictures that stand up against most modeling publications.

Furthermore, SI established its Swimsuit Issue as the only fashion magazine that matters in mainstream America. Fashionistas and Couturers can recite a laundry list of top models, but being in Sports Illustrated catapults most models into superstardom; landing on the cover of the magazine is establishes you as a bonafide A-list celebrity and .

Supermodels like Heidi Klum, Cindy Crawford and Tyra Banks all took their SI celebrity and turned their modeling career into massive entertainment careers, involving film, television and mainstream product lines.

In creating this fashion machine around the Swimsuit Issue, SI made it ok for John Q. Public to go ahead and gloss over the pages over hot babes on the train. Wives and girlfriends couldn’t make too many comments against the issue because the hype around it made them interested in it as well. Junior High boys could look at the magazine openly without worrying about what mom thinks; heck, mom pays for your subscription to the magazine after all, she said that the Swimsuit Issue was ok. I still remember getting my first issue and immediately wanting to do things I hadn’t yet understood to Laetitia Casta.

And because its Sports Illustrated’s issue, no one will think of you as a pervert for owning it. So unlike the deviant connotations that come with slowly thumbing through a Victoria’s Secret catalogue or subscribing to Hustler, SI leaves you with a clean slate.

Sports Illustrated successfully created a paradox; the socially accepted smut magazine. Now, with innovations like body paint and 3-D photography, SI has further pushed the limits of its bikini brand and continues to give guys like me the acceptable excuse to stare at half naked French Supermodels in leopard print two-pieces.

Thanks to
Sports Illustrated for the pictures.