2019 SI Swimsuit

[bucky]

On 5/8/2019 at 7:30 PM, Stromboli1 said:

 

SI & VS both suck now and have nowhere near the clout they used to have. 

VS lost clout because they're not inclusive enough and SI is losing clout for being too inclusive. I think Ed realizes he will be opening up the floodgates if he caves to the PC crowd. MJ has got to be trolling with those photos of Hunter. 

[Light72B]

Readers apparently celebrating there's someone really fat in the magazine. Yet "the comments below have been moderated in advance" 😐

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7015835/Curvy-Sports-Illustrated-Swimsuit-star-Hunter-McGrady-opens-body-confidence.html#comments

[Stormbringer]

Just now, Light72B said:

Readers apparently celebrating there's someone really fat in the magazine. Yet "the comments below have been moderated in advance" 😐

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7015835/Curvy-Sports-Illustrated-Swimsuit-star-Hunter-McGrady-opens-body-confidence.html#comments

 

5 comments. All of them posted around the same time period.

Not suspicious at all  

 

Spoiler

Now this is definitely SI's song now even more than last year    

 

 

 

[happycanadian2]

Ok setting aside any comments or criticisms of the models themselves (I think y'all did a fine job of it already haha), WHAT THE HELL IS THIS AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY?! 

 

It's reeeaaallly time to shake it up. 

 

I think part of why SI is suffering is because of Instagram. Like, it used to be a big deal and kind of a special event to see legit supermodels in sexy swimsuits for the SI issue. But now every trick with a bikini has endless selfies on Insta all the time. And a lot of the times with photography that's actually superior to the shots I'm seeing here for this issue. So why would anyone pay money for it? 

 

If it felt like a *premium* exclusive product, than that would be one thing. But they'd have to be getting models who actually have a value currency and exclusivity associated with them. Barbara and Lais are good examples, but there are soooo many more that are sexy and would help elevate this magazine (Joan, Candice, Doutzen, Karlie, Gigi, Bella, Imaan, Cindy Bruna, etc etc etc).

[Enrico_sw]

17 minutes ago, Light72B said:

Readers apparently celebrating there's someone really fat in the magazine. Yet "the comments below have been moderated in advance" 😐

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7015835/Curvy-Sports-Illustrated-Swimsuit-star-Hunter-McGrady-opens-body-confidence.html#comments

 

Of course, it's moderated. Labelling stuff as "hate speech" is the modern weapon against diversity of thought.

 

 

500 years ago, when your rulers didn't like your thoughts, they slit your throat. Nowadays, they shame you. That could be seen as a progress.... but I remember a golden period  when free speech was a prime value. I hope it will come back...

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Enrico_sw]

9 minutes ago, Stormbringer said:

  Hide contents

Now this is definitely SI's song now even more than last year    

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah

 

And this one too

 

Spoiler

"You ain't fat, you ain't nothing"

 

 

 

 

[Stormbringer]

Just now, Enrico_sw said:

And this one too

 

That one works too  

[Stromboli1]

51 minutes ago, bucky said:

VS lost clout because they're not inclusive enough and SI is losing clout for being too inclusive. I think Ed realizes he will be opening up the floodgates if he caves to the PC crowd. MJ has got to be trolling with those photos of Hunter. 

 

VS lost clout because their girls' look has a high fashion approach now rather than the good curves (nothing like Hunter) their girls used to have.

[Prettyphile]

Miami Event

 

 

[Schemer]

32 minutes ago, Prettyphile said:

       

 

 

Jesus Christ, MJ. What have you done?

 

 

[Enrico_sw]

12 minutes ago, Schemer said:

Jesus Christ, MJ. What have you done?

 

Something like this...

Spoiler

 

 

[Prettyphile]

Is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Still Relevant?

 

Quote

Confidence. Story. Success. These are what Sports Illustrated editor M.J. Day wants readers to take away from this year’s Swimsuit Issue, but is it possible to see anything beyond the pages and pages of scantily clad women?

 

Day thinks so and said this year’s selection of three women for three different covers — entrepreneur and model Tyra Banks; U.S. Women’s Soccer player Alex Morgan, and SI Model Search winner Camille Kostek — represent plenty beyond being a female posing for a largely male audience.

“Look, you have Tyra, who is the epitome of success from this franchise, she’s the absolute definition of model to mogul,” Day said. “She is what I hope for every woman period and for every woman who is a part of this brand. Just because you’re a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model doesn’t mean you can’t teach at Harvard or get an MBA.”

 

Besides it being a launching pad for models getting into business or becoming brands on their own — something SI helped along by being the first magazine to include models’ names in cover lines — Day said a woman like Morgan can make it a place to show off not only changes in female sport, but also ideals of female beauty.

 

“I’ve been doing this for so long, I’ve worked with athletes for so long, and in the past, they’d often be like, ‘Oh, make sure my arm doesn’t look too big,’ or ‘I don’t want to look too ripped or too masculine.’ I would get a little frustrated, but I always let the talent guide me,” Day explained. “What I noticed this year, which is so incredible, [Morgan and two teammates she posed with inside] were like ‘I want you to see my abs!’ ‘Look at my leg definition!’ They were so proud of themselves. It was a very rewarding moment.”

But there’s no doubt that the cultural changes taking place around feminism and #MeToo, with a lot of media taking pains to move away from some traditional portrayals of women, has been difficult for a magazine that created the Swimsuit Issue to titillate its male subscriber base. Some of the change is clear with this year’s covers. Banks, Morgan and Kostek are all posing much less suggestively than covers past, and all have the entirety of their bikinis on. No arms being used as nipple covers. No bottoms being pulled off or untied.

 

“This shift is work and it’s not painless, but it’s worth the pain because we’re affecting positive change,” Day said, noting Morgan flew from Paris for her SI shoot the day after Women’s Soccer revealed its gender discrimination lawsuit against U.S. Soccer, over pay equity and working conditions. And this year’s Swimsuit Issue will also include a two-day event, with panels with models and editors discussing their platforms and work and the story of the Swimsuit Issue, which started in 1964.

 

Although the women in this year’s issue are an array of shapes and colors and backgrounds, Day admitted that the issue traditionally has focused on the male gaze, and with highly sexualized results. But she said the magazine is “evolving” and that the criticism of the issue objectifying women is “subjective.”

 

“I expect to hear things like that…I don’t have a problem with differing opinions,” Day said. “It creates conversation and the more conversations we can have, the more minds we can change. I know every single woman we have does it for herself, not for men. I’m there and you don’t drag anyone kicking and screaming onto the set.”

 

An area where Day is a bit less certain is where Sports Illustrated as a magazine is headed. Its current owner, Meredith, put it up for sale a year ago, along with some other former Time Inc. titles that didn’t fit its core family-friendly lifestyle magazine portfolio, but it’s had some trouble finding a buyer. The price is said to have dropped from an initial asking price of $150 million to around $100 million and the most recent party interested is said to be Authentic Brands Group, which is likely to close the title and make it a pure licensing play.

 

Day said she didn’t go into this year’s Swimsuit Issue thinking it could be her last and that she’s been keeping her head down and working without the “noise” of who could be buying the magazine getting in her way. Something she does have are “notebooks full” of ideas for things Sports Illustrated can do, if it gets an owner who wants to build it.

 

“Swim is such a lifestyle; the women and the brand is so far reaching — it’s fashion, it’s fun, it’s food, it’s mental health, adventure, inspiration, it’s so many things,” Day said. “Once this thing has the wings it needs and a new set of people investing, wanting to make it great, it’s positioned to do really wonderful, impactful things.”

6

 

2019 the year the Men's magazine died.

 

[Schemer]

Quote

But she said the magazine is “evolving” and that the criticism of the issue objectifying women is “subjective.”

 

Famous last words of every men's magazine who tried to rebrand. And flopped.

[Enrico_sw]

8 hours ago, Prettyphile said:

Is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Still Relevant?

 

This is a very interesting article. Thanks a lot for sharing.

 

8 hours ago, Prettyphile said:

Although the women in this year’s issue are an array of shapes and colors and backgrounds, Day admitted that the issue traditionally has focused on the male gaze, and with highly sexualized results. But she said the magazine is “evolving” and that the criticism of the issue objectifying women is “subjective.”

 

In the PC cult, genders don't exist (or there are millions of them ), so male/female should be erased. But let's erase male first, because they are full of toxic masculinity. This is exactly what they think. For them, male interests are dirty and toxic.

 

Men and women are partners. In a normal world, they respect each other's interests.

 

Quote

An area where Day is a bit less certain is where Sports Illustrated as a magazine is headed

 

Sure, but that's not important, a matter of life and death is not important when you're fighting for PC. Such a "pure and noble" PC fight brings transcendent satisfaction that is above existence.

 @Schemer This is even worse than we thought. They don't even care if the business die.

[SympathysSilhouette]

The problem with activism through SISE is this (besides the obvious insanity of it):

 

The (hard) left already thinks your magazine is problematic.

You will not appeal to the mainstream/center by trying to force PC ideas down their throats.

 

So it's hard for me to figure out who these editorial choices (in terms of body positivity and inclusion I guess) are supposed to reach.

[Memento Mori]

1 hour ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

 

So it's hard for me to figure out who these editorial choices (in terms of body positivity and inclusion I guess) are supposed to reach.

 

 

As I said in my post a few pages back, media liberals.

 

"The left" isn't a monolith and has a great deal of different takes on whether "looking at media of conventionally attractive women" is good, bad, or neutral. What most of them agree on is that it's not great for that to be commodified and sold by capital. So even if they're in the "ogle Sarah Stephens, it's fine" camp, they're not going to go out of their way to buy SI, nor are they likely to give SISE any credit for "representation," since that's largely a liberal goal, particularly if that's all they're doing. The left cares about power structures, and nothing SI has done suggests they have even reconsidered the implications of a corporate-owned magazine dictating what beauty ought to be. Now if they want to become a swimsuit lady collective owned and operated by the models and photographers, then some on the left might give it a second look, and in fact even encourage people to pay for it. You don't see as many critiques of, say, the Suicide Girls among left wingers for largely this reason.

 

Rank and file Liberals are as diverse as the left, but might be more inclined to accept the SISE's approach to inclusion if they haven't already decisively determined it's just a lads' mag with delusions of grandeur. If I had to venture a guess, those Liberals who paid attention to the content of the magazine at all probably condemned it during MJ's "go nuts with the airbrushing" era, which reached a peak in 2011 or so if I recall correctly. When you've broken out Photoshop to make Nina Agdal's body even more perfect then yeah, maybe you did go too far in promoting unrealistic standards of beauty; and Liberals who actually remember this (and most do, if only vaguely) will see the current edition as desperate. They might argue, with some justification, that the same editorial team who thought the 2011 photos were good is definitely ill-equipped to even do justice to their more recent approach.

 

What makes media (read: corporate) liberals different is they're the ones whose views on what you conservative lot (this is by far the most right-wing forum I willingly read in my free time) call "PC" or social justice are actually insincere and calculated, rather than deriving from genuinely-held moral principles. Their cynicism permits them to ignore the obvious contradictions in the very concept of a woke titty mag. Their aim isn't to "shove PC down your throats," their aim is to thread the needle between Liberals and the right (Edit: they don't know what the left is, and wouldn't care about us if they did), so they can sell magazines to as many people as possible. They want to have their cake and eat it too, which infuriates Liberals, but just makes leftists tell them, "we told you so." (Which also infuriates Liberals, so they're gonna vote for Joe Biden to get back at us).

[Jack Shaftoe]

10 hours ago, Prettyphile said:

But there’s no doubt that the cultural changes taking place around feminism and #MeToo, with a lot of media taking pains to move away from some traditional portrayals of women, has been difficult for a magazine that created the Swimsuit Issue to titillate its male subscriber base. Some of the change is clear with this year’s covers. Banks, Morgan and Kostek are all posing much less suggestively than covers past, and all have the entirety of their bikinis on. No arms being used as nipple covers. No bottoms being pulled off or untied.

 

So we are just going to pretend that the rest of the issue isn't just as sexually suggestive as in years past? Talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

 

10 hours ago, Prettyphile said:

“I expect to hear things like that…I don’t have a problem with differing opinions,” Day said. “It creates conversation and the more conversations we can have, the more minds we can change. I know every single woman we have does it for herself, not for men. I’m there and you don’t drag anyone kicking and screaming onto the set.”

 

Does that mean that a job cannot possibly be demeaning unless the employees are "dragged kicking and screaming"? Your magazine is all about objectifying women, MJ, it's not a "differing opinion", it's a fact.

 

25 minutes ago, Memento Mori said:

Their aim isn't to "shove PC down your throats," their aim is to thread the needle between left and right, so they can sell magazines to as many people as possible.

 

That's pretty obvious but it sure seems like they would sell a lot more if they stopped having such an overt agenda, be it left or right wing one.

[Memento Mori]

31 minutes ago, Jack Shaftoe said:

That's pretty obvious but it sure seems like they would sell a lot more if they stopped having such an overt agenda, be it left or right wing one.

 

Probably. They might think that it's too late for subtlety, their brand, nay their entire concept was (and despite their efforts, still is) seriously compromised among Liberals.

 

But honestly the simplest and, in my view, likeliest explanation is that being subtle is actually hard, and MJ et al. aren't up to that challenge.

 

31 minutes ago, Jack Shaftoe said:

Does that mean that a job cannot possibly be demeaning unless the employees are "dragged kicking and screaming"? Your magazine is all about objectifying women, MJ, it's not a "differing opinion", it's a fact.

 

Edit:

 

This is unavoidably true, and it's implicit in their new approach that they think it is a corrective to encourage readers to objectify a wider variety of women.

 

If they were more honest and competent, it seems obvious to me that they should have gone another direction and started objectifying conventionally attractive men, too. Sure that would annoy some folks, but probably fewer of them, and along less contested political lines. People frustrated by hot guys in their girlie mag, and people concerned with the lingering imbalance due to patriarchy would both be mad, but those people are not the same and don't even talk to each other.

[Enrico_sw]

It's always great to discuss with people with whom we don't always agree. I don't care about right, left, center or whatever. I like to discuss with everybody, let's forget those "teams" that impose ready-made thinking.

 

57 minutes ago, Memento Mori said:

Now if they want to become a swimsuit lady collective owned and operated by the models and photographers,

 

That's the very definition of a business in a free market. Competent people who create something freely and out of nothing. What you actually denounce are big corporations, market influencers and I agree with you on this point. They smother people and want to impose shitty products (just like the food industry, whose giants slowly kill us via obese making crap).

 

50 minutes ago, Memento Mori said:

Their aim isn't to "shove PC down your throats," their aim is to thread the needle between liberals and the right (they don't know what the left is, and wouldn't care about us if they did), so they can sell magazines to as many people as possible.

 

I don't think so. Business isn't their prime purpose (or they're very bad at it). These guys are rich folks who wants to buy themselves a conscience (the left is there Jiminy Cricket). Sometimes, they're just faithless people whose void need to be filled.

 

43 minutes ago, Memento Mori said:

What makes media (read: corporate) liberals

 

The Pravda was not a coportate media... and yet it was not exactly an honest journal. Conservative, liberal or propaganda media are all crap. They are media whose prime goal is to change the world, that's why they're bad. The best media are those whose prime goal is understanding stuff.

 

1 hour ago, Memento Mori said:

maybe you did go too far in promoting unrealistic standards of beauty

 

We all want aesthetic canons. Commoners or not. Rich or poor. Left or right. Promoting beautiful people is good and healthy! We want neither skeleton-like bodies nor obese bodies. That's what SI has done for many years before 2017. Lais, Hannah F or Lauren Mellor have healthy bodies that are awesome and ideal that many seek.

 

Hunter McG has an obese body. She deserves respect, but calling her body positive is a lie. It's bad for her health and they shouldn't promote this behavior. Having an epidemic of obesity is one of the shittiest health problem (the big corporations you denounce have a big responsability for it, but we do have some as well).