I’ve often referred to this as the greatest photo ever taken.
Photo: Robert Huntzinger
It’s got everything. Two SI stars in their prime. Magnificent candy-colored bikinis in platonic-ideal cuts. A front view alongside a back view.
Readers opened the February 12, 1990 issue to pages 126-127 to see these ladies, bled to the edges of what should have been but inexplicably wasn’t the centerfold.
Although I have stated that an overabundance of nearly-identical poses in the same suit is a shortcoming of the modern swimsuit issue, making it harder to pinpoint single, iconic shots, I do have to praise some variants of this shot that are floating around the internet.
The subtle differences in poses — arms, heads, legs — give you a little
taste of what the shoot would have been like, almost creating a
flip-book in your mind: Watch Elle and Kathy luxuriating side by side,
gently writhing their semi-submerged bodies. My head swims to think
about it.
The caption describes them as keeping cool in the “Cotton House pool” on the private island of Mustique.
There
are a couple of pools on the Cotton House resort grounds, each of which
features a curve along the edge. But based on the tiling, I think this
must be the pool at “The Residence,” a private suite with rates I’m not
even going to bother looking up, so it’s one swimsuit mecca I will never
visit except through these photos.
This photo makes me understand them. These are masterpieces.
The netted top drapes casually and translucently over them, and Judit, apparently just fine with it, tosses us a smile. You can almost see her tilt her head back for a friendly nod as you pass her on the beach. (She’s staying at a neighboring cabin.)
This was over a decade before the great de-nippling of Sports Illustrated, and this is probably the kind of photo that got them temporarily banned in the first place.
The bikini bottom, color-coordinated with the net and the flippers and the bracelet, is a sweet, smooth, yellow triangle. But one fun detail is the twist on the strap above her hip.
In this magazine, swimsuits tend to be form-fitting and pristine. We want the suits, even if they’re not actually painted on, to look painted on.
But here, whether or not it’s intentional, the tiny twist implies casualness.
There’s a companion photo.
Here we see Judit from behind. Maybe we’ve been watching her go back and forth with her flippers and her bag of … dry clothes? Shells? This time, perhaps she’s a little less patient with our stare. Her mouth is caught mid-sentence, as if she’s saying, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
But from this angle we also see her hair, mussed and beachy, tied up with a bandana. The top is a little ragged, now that you mention it. And her bikini bottom is a little loose, ever so slightly saggy, not the shrinkwrap that most SI swimsuits are.
These photos are a teensy bit ramshackle, at least compared to most others. It feels like a beach — not a fantasy beach, but a more visceral one, with the humid air and a mild sunburn and a little sand in your shoes. I think Judit looks a bit more down-to-earth, maybe even touchable, as a result.
This was Jessica’s sophomore year, and the year she nestled into my brain as one of my all-time favorite models.
Photo: Steve Erle
She was mostly in tans and earth tones that
year, and a lot of her shots take place against this craggy, grey
wasteland, making the shoot less beachy, more post-apocalyptic.
This
is the opposite of a high-cut suit, but it is no less sexy for it. It
taps into my love of the full-body sheath of a one-piece, but moreso.
Then it adds a wonderful wet cling — psychedelic swirls where the fabric
hugs her, alongside a few islands where it’s drier, or where there’s a
bit of space between the suit and her body.
There’s a lot of engaging detail, I guess is what I’m saying.
Top
it off with a cleavage-window and Jessica’s sly “I know what you’re
thinking” side-eye, and it combines everything I love about her.
It’s actually remarkably
similar to Karen Mulder’s shot from six years later. Blonde bombshell,
swervy pose, turquoise bikini. I guess I have a “type.”
But
Ashley’s pose is more presentational. Here’s a head-on look at her
magnificent, voluptuous body. A platonic ideal of a bikini top and
bottom, laid out upon Ashley for our enjoyment.
For me, there’s a
kind of silliness to the pose as well. The tousled hair, the
pressed-together thighs, the pouty lips aimed off to the heavens … It’s
like she’s doing a parody of a sexy pose, “playing at” being a bathing
beauty.
When you watch Ashley in her making-of videos, she
clearly has a sense of humor. She goofs around, cracks jokes, and seems
to relish the bizarreness of what she’s doing: prancing through the snow
in a swimsuit, straddling a fence in a swimsuit, lathering soap bubbles
on her chest while thigh-deep in a jacuzzi in a swimsuit, etc.
In
a lot of behind-the-scenes SI videos, a girl will pull an exaggerated,
silly “sexy” move, like winking at the camera or wriggling her hips or
blowing a kiss. The wonderful thing is, their cartoonish, ironic
sexiness still comes across as sexy. They can’t escape it, no matter how
corny they try to make it.
She put together an eight-year reign, which is impressive. 2009 was her sixth appearance.
This
might not be the best photo of her — there are plenty that make a
beautiful display of her full, stellar body — but there’s something
about this one that makes me stop and stare.
There are several layers of teasing here.
There’s the direct and confident eye contact, almost a dare directed at the viewer.
Then
her top is undone, which is a standard go-to teasing move. The
thumb-hook, the free-hip, the objects-as-improvised-top — the hint at
impending nudity is a button SI presses regularly.
And
there’s something sexy about that bite. Mouths are easily sexualized,
whether the model is biting a hot dog or a straw or her fingernail. But
offhand, I can’t think of another photo in all of SI history where the
model is closing her mouth around her own swimsuit.
And
I know not everyone is as perverted as I am, but I can’t be the only
person whose mind drifts to a gag being gently inserted between her
teeth? No? Just me? Moving on.
Jessica was a solid and statuesque beauty with a long and gorgeous tenure. One of the greats of her decade.
This was her rookie year of two years in the magazine. She’s breathtaking.
I
think she’s got a following of her own. I know she’s done some
Victoria’s Secret and maybe a few lad rags? But she should be more
exalted in SI than she is.
I
put her at the halfway point of my top-50 ranking of swimsuit models
back in 2013, but it’s still a pleasant surprise when I see her. “Oh
right! Jarah Mariano!”
This photo is just so … pretty.
Everything
about it is very feminine. Pink bikini, not too modest but not overly
skimpy, with a sparkly design. A fragrant-looking lei draped around her
neck. An elegant, curvy pose, soft smile, wisps of hair caressed by the
breeze.
I once declared that this photo could have been a cover.
In fact, I think it’s a much better image than Marisa’s cover that year.
She even angles her head and upper body as if to accommodate the Sports
Illustrated title across the top.
Christie’s swimsuits got progressively smaller over the course of her three consecutive covers.
Photo: John G. Zimmerman
And while skimpier does not equal sexier, I think this is her sexiest cover.
This
bikini is minuscule even by today’s standards. Its three or four
different shades of purple and its desert-island tatters give it a
haphazard patchwork look, and you can imagine being shipwrecked with
Christie during this breathtaking sunrise. A flock of birds swells
behind her; she seems to have summoned them with her superheroine sex
appeal. Amidst it all, she meets your gaze with a bold, confident
all-American girl grin.
I feel like this cover introduced the 80s
and the golden age of the swimsuit issue. This was the rookie year of
both Carol Alt and Kelly Emberg. A year later, Kim Alexis sauntered in. A
year after that, we’d meet Paulina Porizkova. Then Kathy Ireland. Then
Elle Macpherson. This issue was the starter pistol for a decade of SI
household names.
But at that moment, we had Christie in all her Brinkleyness.
I think 2012 was a year of too much
retouching, so unfortunately her skin looks a little supernatural in its
smoothness. But happily, her freckles remain. I think those, along with the
tousled hair and the lazy, matter-of-fact look she’s giving us,
emphasize Julie’s girl-next-doorness that holds such appeal for me. This
pic exudes the casual and joyful warmth she shows in her
behind-the-scenes interviews.
And the body, in that classic
lying-on-her-side bathing beauty pose, transcends a bit of retouching.
That hip-curve. That pretty crease down the center of her midriff. That
sparse smattering of grains of sand. That low-slung, electric lime
bikini bottom. It looks like a grey day on the beach, but that just
serves to enhance her warm, massageable skin and neon swimsuit.
It’s a good old-fashioned bikini pose, and Julie strikes it beautifully.
I know I’m on record saying that more than two girls in a single photo is overkill. But …
Photo: Raphael Mazzucco
This one is different. These girls aren’t posing. They’re standing around in an unguarded moment. Some them seem to be laughing at a comment one of them made. They’re not twisting their bodies or finding their light or trying to tilt their “best sides” to the camera. They’re just … kind of … standing there. Being beautiful.
This particular shot is from Mazzucco’s book Exposure. The shoot is full of sultry, posed shots: one girl, two girls, all eight girls, purring at the camera, lounging on the sand, resting their bodies upon other bodies. “Heaven” is a great title for Walter Iooss Jr.’s swimsuit book, but it might even be more appropriate for Mazzucco’s. The fact that they’re all in white lends it an extra sense of eternal paradise.
I mean, good lord.
There’s something I find amazing about multi-girl shoots that I don’t think I’ve mentioned before.
Sara
and Gigi, Julie and Jessica, Angie and Rebecca, Ashley and everyone —
each girl knows she’s not only offering up her body as a male fantasy,
she’s also allowing herself to be half that male fantasy. She’s
collaborating with another model, knowing she won’t even be the
exclusive focus of the male gaze. It’s that “objectification” thing I
keep trying to describe (without sounding like a creep) — but
multiplied.
Even now, after decades of looking at the swimsuit
issue, I still have this joyful bewilderment that the models are okay
with us looking. It’s that “permission” I’ve mentioned before. Every
time a model in an interview makes some fun, winking, giggly reference
to how small her swimsuit is, or how much skin she’s exposing, it brings
a smile to my face. And here we have eight smiling models, all in on it
together.
In every sense of the word. Rachel’s magnificent body. The warm oranges and yellows. And you can almost see the Mexican heat glistening off the page.
There’s a palpable relief from the shadow the sombrero casts over her face, which also taps into my mild “thing” about the model’s eyes being obscured.
She braces herself against her shadow and takes on a “cowgirl in repose” position, as if she’s about to hand-roll a cigarillo while waitin’ for the horses to finish drinking at the trough, but that’s just another playful pinup act. Tiny and pretty bottoms in their high 1980s cut, a playful top slung low off her shoulders: The femininity radiates from her absolutely stellar curves.
Esti is one of the great underappreciated models of the past decade.
Photo: Riccardo Tinelli
This might be the first image that comes to mind when I think of her.
Most of her photos in her three-year career showed off her kewpie-doll cuteness, tempered with her endearing, slightly crooked smile. But this photo turns her into an intense Caravaggio painting, chiaroscuro caressing the contours of a magnificent bikini body. The carved abs, the lovely breasts, the thumbs inching the bottoms down from both hips.
Most thumb-hook shots feature the girl looking directly at the camera, usually with a smile or a glare of seduction on her face. Thumb-hooking is an action born from playfulness; the model is deliberately teasing you, the viewer.
But Esti here doesn’t even seem to be aware that we’re here. Is she alone, lost in thought, absently fiddling with her suit? Is she doing this for the benefit of some other viewer, off stage left? Or is she just a magnificent sculpture of an Italian sex goddess, in keeping with the statue theme of her Naples shoot?
Every year, SI includes at least one suit that seems custom-chosen to reinforce my love of one-piecers. Bregje’s is one for my hall of fame.
Photo: Raphael Mazzucco
The sharp, high-cut suit clings perfectly to Bregje’s long, lean, praying mantis body in her classic side-lounge swimsuit-girl pose. She meets your gaze with her otherworldly eyes
She’s a slash of black against a desert landscape, kind of a negative of Kate’s entry. Bright, hot sky and sand, then a deep, black shape absorbing all light and your eyes.
This Monique shot is in the same vein as Coco’s: swimsuit enhanced by environment. It’s a frame of Wes Anderson symmetry, with a brown wedge of boat and skin thrusting into a breathtaking landscape of giant lily pads, featuring a perfect bikini design (and derrière).
There’s a certain something to a shot where you don’t see the model’s face. To me, it’s kind of like a lite version of the body-only shots, but a bit more subtle and moody. When I used to update the title banner on this blog every month, I cropped the photos so you didn’t see the girl’s eyes — or occasionally one eye would peek out, but not the other. Just seeing the swimsuited body under a smiling mouth taps into the thrill of objectification I mentioned in my last post.
In discussing his book “Heaven,” Iooss talked about this photo:
“The lily-pads picture in Brazil is one of my favorites.... This was like the swamp of swamps. This is where the first creature crawled out of, that’s what you felt like.... I’m on the boat, and you’re straddling it, and the boat’s just wiggling. Someone’s trying to hold it in the back, but it was very difficult.... This was the perfect suit, the little green-and-yellow suit. We put her in a hat, and bingo. You know, things happened.”
It’s downright barbaric how small and low-res the online pics were in 1999. SI needs to remaster these old photos.
Photo: Dominique Issermann
This photo of Yamila appeared in the margins of the introduction to the ’99 issue. You might see it as a “genie in a bottle” image, which is what the magazine’s caption writer went with: “There’s no getting this bikini back in the bottle.”
But to me it seems more like she’s spilling out of the jar. Like, in this world, beautiful women come in giant clay jars, and I’ve just opened this one, and I’ve poured Yamila out on the beach, and she’s lounging, sun-kissed, on the sand, smiling expectantly at me, ready for whatever I might have in mind.
I suppose those two “What is it you wish?” scenarios aren’t that different.
“Objectification” is a charged word in this realm. It’s a word that’s hurled at the swimsuit issue, and similar sexy-lady endeavors, as an accusation of sexism. And I don’t think that’s entirely unfair. These are flesh-and-blood human beings, not toys or decorations.
The way I rationalized it way back in my adolescence was: The woman is not an object, but the photograph is.
For better or worse, the image triggers a false sense of connection with the woman. We’re looking at her, but she’s looking at a camera lens.
And for that matter, we’re not really looking at her, but at a flat surface simulating her via a series of photons reflected off of —
Anyway.
But even the feminist author of this highly critical book about the swimsuit issue states that objectification isn’t inherently bad, in the right conditions. I’d say there’s a playful, consensual objectification that happens in relationships and flirting. Imagine the rush of having a woman smile at you and say, “So what do you wanna do to me?”
And I think that’s what’s at play in swimsuit photography. It doesn’t seem cruel or dehumanizing to me. Just some sexy women enjoying being sexy for an audience they know is appreciative. They’re presenting themselves to us, of their own volition, fully aware of where our eyes will wander.
And maybe it’s just my perverted mind at work, but Yamila’s pose up there seems to tap into the playful objectification angle a little extra. It joins the ranks of photos like Rebecca on a banquet table. Kathy in a cage.* Paulina in a (literal) fishnet.
This is tangentially related, maybe, but this video comes to mind of Sara Sampaio and Gigi Hadid, as rookies, quizzing people — male and female — at some resort. Two of their questions, “Which butt is whose?” and “Who’s hotter, blondes or brunettes?” are certainly cases of the models objectifying themselves.
(Are you a butt man?” Sara asks a gentleman early in the video.)
They compete for attention, stumping for votes in the Battle of the Hair Colors.
Gigi, upon hearing a woman declare that brunettes are hotter: “I need all boys to please report to here!”
Sara, on her knees, after a man says he prefers blondes: “Why? We’re hotter!”
I don’t think you’d see this video made now, a mere six years later. It’s a little too on-the-nose for SI’s current brand, in which they try to blend the blatant T&A into more of a general “Celebration of Beauty!” attitude.
Anyway. Yamila’s super hot. This is a great photo of her.
*I don’t think this "caged Kathy" photo was ever in the magazine, but I found it on Robert Huntzinger’s site surrounded by other SI pics.
