Two-Pièce de Résistance: Stephanie Seymour, 1989

Thongs are pretty amazing.

Photo: Marc Hispard

G-strings, too. They are basically an admission that we, as a society, have decided that naked butts are a-okay.

This over-the-counter girlie magazine, with the word “swimsuit” in the title, finds innovative ways to tease at — but conceal — the other forbidden areas of the body. Angles of poses, backlighting, fabric (even if it’s occasionally translucent).

But what, really, is the difference between an ass in a thong and an ass out of a thong?

One thing I’ll say about Stephanie: She has a lot of great shots. Possibly the highest batting average of any model who never got a cover. She’s just incredible. I finally chose to feature this lovely photograph.

This bikini was not in the 1989 25th Anniversary issue of the magazine. We had to wait until the 1990 desk calendar — the first one SI ever put out — to find this photo waiting for us during the week of August 26. (As it happens, Stephanie was on the cover of that desk calendar.)

And thank goodness for those calendars. In the days before each model got dozens of online photos, there were pics like this that would have disappeared if not for the 52-week bonus collection SI put out later each year.


Stephanie’s front is gently sun-kissed in this shot. But her back — where we are — is in shadow. She turns and looks at us over her shoulder, but this isn’t quite a Grable pose because she’s not smiling. She’s also not glowering. It’s a nearly expressionless glance that we’re allowed to put our own meaning to.

For me, it’s that that “permission” dynamic I find so joyful — “I know you’re looking, and I don’t blame you. Knock yourself out. I’ll just go back to gazing out at the ocean now.”


I read an article once in some men’s magazine, probably at the end of 1999. The topic was something like “The 50 Greatest Inventions of the Twentieth Century.” One of them was panties.

An observation from that article was that a woman wearing only panties is somehow more naked than she is when she’s actually naked.

The thong, I think, has that effect. It covers nothing, but its presence enhances nevertheless. It’s a frame, it’s an arrow, it’s the optical illusion of two profiles forming a vase. Its presence emphasizes its absence.

And that’s the difference between an ass in a thong and an ass out of a thong.