When I was in high school I worked at my local library (I know — nerd alert). I loved being able to be one of the first to see new books when they came in and learning about new authors, but one nice advantage as a teenage boy was to get to see the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue before most subscribers received it in their mailboxes.
For nearly 60 years, Sports Illustrated has entertained millions of men with its yearly swimsuit edition. Readers anticipate the swimsuit issue for the beautiful women, but I’d wager that they don’t approach it for a nuanced discussion of the issues facing our society at large.
But that’s not what Sports Illustrated thinks.
Instead, Outkick reports that the magazine is crowing over this year’s issue, which hits newsstands this month, because the 2022 swimsuit edition features the women of the WNBA.
The W is in the house! 🏀 The women of WNBA traded in their uniforms for swimsuits & made all our swishes come true. Sue Bird, Breanna Stewart, Nneka Ogwumike, Te'a Cooper & Didi Richards will be featured in our 2022 issue-hitting newsstands on May 19th. https://t.co/4cf2Jgqg9w pic.twitter.com/09cutvJl5V
— Sports Illustrated Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) May 9, 2022
The only sportswoman more insufferable than this bunch is Megan Rapinoe.
One of the WNBA’s top players hailed the issue as a victory for social justice, or something, in a word salad.
“We represent a variety of things: of course women, women of color, members of the LGBTQIA2+ community and much more … The [Swimsuit] issue for so many years has been iconic and has represented a lot for women,” declared Sue Bird. “Now you are seeing an evolution in what that can mean and what that can look like, and I think the WNBA players being a part of that is what makes it special. There is no better group of women to showcase that evolution.”
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“While the SI swimsuit issue used to be a hot commodity amongst the straight male community as a winter break after the Super Bowl, now it’s nothing more than an echo chamber for the wokes to yell YAASSSSS QUEEEN and say this is what diversity and inclusion looks like as this treasured institution survives one more trip around the sun,” writes Joe Kinsey at Outkick.
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But the virtue-signaling goes far beyond the women modeling the bathing suits to include the swimsuit brands themselves. Sports Illustrated announced that it was partnering exclusively on this year’s issue with “brands who are helping drive gender equality forward” as a way of “changing the cost of doing business from a monetary value to a currency of doing good.”
I haven’t looked at a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition in years, but I can tell you that I’ve never picked one up and wondered what the model thought about trade policy, abortion, the environment, or “the LGBTQIA2+ community,” and it’s never crossed my mind to expressed concern about whether the manufacturer of the suits operated under a “currency of doing good.”
From 1964 until 2021, the swimsuit edition was about beautiful women wearing as little as society would allow them to get away with. It celebrated the female form, great scenery, and exquisite photography. Now the wokes have taken over, and the swimsuit issue is all about pushing far-left values. How long before they ruin it completely?
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