Here she is in Victoria’s Secret.
Here she is naked in GQ Mexico.
Here she is bikini’d in GQ South Africa.
And here she is as the lost Brazilian model from the 2007 swimsuit issue.
SI: I need more of her. You need more of her. Let’s do this.
Showing posts with label Aline Nakashima. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aline Nakashima. Show all posts
Sunday, March 5, 2017
The Girl So Nice They Named Her Lais
The more time I’ve spent contemplating Lais Ribeiro, the more in love with her I fall.
She’s not just my favorite rookie. She’s my favorite model this year.
I know it’s only her first issue, but I might be developing a Stacey Williams/Julie Henderson level obsession with her. She’s intoxicating.
So, SI: Bring her back! Over and over! She’s perfect.
Here she is in Victoria’s Secret.
Here she is naked in GQ Mexico.
Here she is bikini’d in GQ South Africa.
And here she is as the lost Brazilian model from the 2007 swimsuit issue.
SI: I need more of her. You need more of her. Let’s do this.
Here she is in Victoria’s Secret.
Here she is naked in GQ Mexico.
Here she is bikini’d in GQ South Africa.
And here she is as the lost Brazilian model from the 2007 swimsuit issue.
SI: I need more of her. You need more of her. Let’s do this.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
The Swimsuit Issue, by the Book
My biggest regret about this blog is that I never got around to talking in depth about this 1997 book:
The Swimsuit Issue and Sport: Hegemonic Masculinity in Sports Illustrated, by Laurel R. Davis. An entire book dedicated to a scholarly study of the swimsuit issue!
I had planned to write about it, for literally years. I read it two or three times, taking notes. But I never got around to it. And at some point, SI’s web presence stopped the feature where you could virtually flip through old issues of the magazine. That was a big blow—I wanted to find specific photos and captions Davis referenced in the book.
Spoiler alert: It’s anti-swimsuit issue. But it’s a lot more complex in its approach than you might assume.
Before I go, I thought I’d jot down a few things about it.
• Sometimes it’s a little too scholarly.
And I don’t mean “hard to read,” but rather “willing to disappear into overanalysis and theory.” Davis spends a lot of time establishing that, yes, the swimsuit issue is aimed at straight guys. And a significant portion of a chapter is spent trying to figure out if the swimsuit issue is porn or art or advertising or pin-up. She lists arguments in favor and against each category. For example:
Is it porn?
PRO: It definitely plays on sexuality. CON: It’s too tame.
Is it art?
PRO: The photography is top quality and the photographers are credited. CON: It’s a mass-produced sports magazine.
Is it advertising?
PRO: The swimwear is identified by designer and price. CON: The primary intent is not to sell swimwear.
Well, that leaves the most obvious choice: pin-up. But even that might not be a useful or reliable term, “because the consumers often disagree with each other about the degree of sexual meaning expressed by texts from the pin-up genre.”
Only in an academic analysis can the obvious be so deftly obscured.
• I think the author would like the ESPN Body Issue a lot more.
She states at the beginning of the book that, “after reading a wide variety of feminist scholarship on pornography, nude bodies in art, pin-ups, and advertising, I became convinced that sexual images and objectification should not be seen as the enemy of feminism.” She thinks hot bodies have their place, but she levels some pretty familiar (and fair) criticisms at the swimsuit issue: What does this have to do with sports? Why feature these women with not-specifically-athletic bodies? Isn’t it sexist to assume that straight guys are the only fans of sports (and Sports Illustrated)?
The book was published way before the ESPN’s Body Issue existed. But (as I’ve pointed out) ESPN is a foil to the swimsuit issue; it features actual athletes, male and female. It’s nowhere near as difficult to justify as part of a sports magazine.
• I think Davis had to backtrack—just a little—with the dawn of Tyra Banks.
I noticed that she claimed to have studied every swimsuit issue from 1964 to 1991, and also 1996. I couldn’t figure out why she skipped 1992 through 1995. Then I noticed that part of her criticism is the magazine’s lack of black models.
This happened in 1996:
So she had to quickly include a reference to Tyra's first cover, as the number of covers featuring black models had jumped from zero to one. I believe (I can’t find it in my notes) she tempers it by pointing out that even in 1996, the black model had to be paired with a blonde white model to help her go down more easily.
If she had expanded her sample one more year, she would have seen this:
Granted, that’s where black cover models end: two consecutive years of Tyra. (Yes, we had Beyonce as well. But she was on the cover because of a marketing partnership and a music theme. She didn’t arrive there by the grueling cover selection process that the other girls—from Babette to Elle to Tyra to Hannah—had to go through.) The cover remains almost entirely caucasian, and that needs to change.
• Davis gets a little ethnocentric in her criticism of ethnocentricity.
She interviewed several unnamed producers of the magazine and asked them for some behind-the-scenes info. When she asked them about race, she noticed that a lot of the producers assumed “race” meant “black”:
“Interestingly, many of the interviewed producers equate ‘people of color’ with ‘African-American,’ ignoring the underrepresentation of Asian-Americans, Latina-Americans, and Native-Americans.”
Here, Davis unwittingly displays a touch of ethnocentricity of her own: Who says the models need to be American at all?
Oluchi is African.
Jessica is half Chinese, half Portuguese, from Australia.
These ladies are from Brazil.
(Which, yes, is in South America, but I don’t think that’s the “-American” Davis is referring to.)
Even the lily-white chicks are from Eastern Europe and New Zealand and the Netherlands and Russia and Spain and France.
I admit, this is just a “gotcha” on my part. Davis’s points—that other races are poorly represented—stands. But it’s an interesting slip. In calling for an openness to the world’s races, she accidentally ignores the non-America world.
• I think she overplays her hand a little.
Something strikes me as very 90s-university-social-critique about this book. I think there are good points to make about sexuality and gender roles in a study of the swimsuit issue. But:
“Feminist critiques of Sports Illustrated generally, and its swimsuit issue in particular, need to address the contemporary components of hegemonic masculinity. As feminists of both genders attempt to reduce aggression and violence that injures women and men, those who support hegemonic masculinity help to produce this violence in sport, homes, and wars.”
Is she linking the swimsuit issue to domestic violence and war??
I guess a more fair description is that she sees it as part of a larger tapestry that includes violence—not that there’s a direct link between Judit Masco in a bikini and Desert Storm. But it does seem like she’s relying on the swimsuit issue to do a lot of heavy lifting in some major global issues.
• Davis may have missed a big story.
She references Media Watch, an organization dedicated to fighting sexism in the media. But—unless I missed it—she doesn’t mention that Media Watch was founded by this woman:
Ann Simonton was the cover girl of the 1974 swimsuit issue. Later she left the industry to become a feminist activist, and she is quite anti-swimsuit issue.
Maybe Davis didn’t know about the link. I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t have explored that detail—it seems custom tailored to her book.
There’s a whole section on the swimsuit issue as “tourism” and the exotification of other cultures—locals as props and stereotypes—that ties in directly with this controversy from the “seven continents” issue. But I sadly don’t have the time to go deeply into that section.
Anyway, if you are interested, and it’s at your local library, check it out. It’s a quick, interesting read. I respect the fact that Davis explicitly states that she doesn’t want to equate “feminism” with “anti-sex,” and her approach makes sure to keep the critiques deeper than “pictures of naked ladies are wrong.”
The Swimsuit Issue and Sport: Hegemonic Masculinity in Sports Illustrated, by Laurel R. Davis. An entire book dedicated to a scholarly study of the swimsuit issue!
I had planned to write about it, for literally years. I read it two or three times, taking notes. But I never got around to it. And at some point, SI’s web presence stopped the feature where you could virtually flip through old issues of the magazine. That was a big blow—I wanted to find specific photos and captions Davis referenced in the book.
Spoiler alert: It’s anti-swimsuit issue. But it’s a lot more complex in its approach than you might assume.
Before I go, I thought I’d jot down a few things about it.
• Sometimes it’s a little too scholarly.
And I don’t mean “hard to read,” but rather “willing to disappear into overanalysis and theory.” Davis spends a lot of time establishing that, yes, the swimsuit issue is aimed at straight guys. And a significant portion of a chapter is spent trying to figure out if the swimsuit issue is porn or art or advertising or pin-up. She lists arguments in favor and against each category. For example:
Is it porn?
PRO: It definitely plays on sexuality. CON: It’s too tame.
Is it art?
PRO: The photography is top quality and the photographers are credited. CON: It’s a mass-produced sports magazine.
Is it advertising?
PRO: The swimwear is identified by designer and price. CON: The primary intent is not to sell swimwear.
Well, that leaves the most obvious choice: pin-up. But even that might not be a useful or reliable term, “because the consumers often disagree with each other about the degree of sexual meaning expressed by texts from the pin-up genre.”
Only in an academic analysis can the obvious be so deftly obscured.
• I think the author would like the ESPN Body Issue a lot more.
She states at the beginning of the book that, “after reading a wide variety of feminist scholarship on pornography, nude bodies in art, pin-ups, and advertising, I became convinced that sexual images and objectification should not be seen as the enemy of feminism.” She thinks hot bodies have their place, but she levels some pretty familiar (and fair) criticisms at the swimsuit issue: What does this have to do with sports? Why feature these women with not-specifically-athletic bodies? Isn’t it sexist to assume that straight guys are the only fans of sports (and Sports Illustrated)?
The book was published way before the ESPN’s Body Issue existed. But (as I’ve pointed out) ESPN is a foil to the swimsuit issue; it features actual athletes, male and female. It’s nowhere near as difficult to justify as part of a sports magazine.
• I think Davis had to backtrack—just a little—with the dawn of Tyra Banks.
I noticed that she claimed to have studied every swimsuit issue from 1964 to 1991, and also 1996. I couldn’t figure out why she skipped 1992 through 1995. Then I noticed that part of her criticism is the magazine’s lack of black models.
This happened in 1996:
So she had to quickly include a reference to Tyra's first cover, as the number of covers featuring black models had jumped from zero to one. I believe (I can’t find it in my notes) she tempers it by pointing out that even in 1996, the black model had to be paired with a blonde white model to help her go down more easily.
If she had expanded her sample one more year, she would have seen this:
Granted, that’s where black cover models end: two consecutive years of Tyra. (Yes, we had Beyonce as well. But she was on the cover because of a marketing partnership and a music theme. She didn’t arrive there by the grueling cover selection process that the other girls—from Babette to Elle to Tyra to Hannah—had to go through.) The cover remains almost entirely caucasian, and that needs to change.
• Davis gets a little ethnocentric in her criticism of ethnocentricity.
She interviewed several unnamed producers of the magazine and asked them for some behind-the-scenes info. When she asked them about race, she noticed that a lot of the producers assumed “race” meant “black”:
“Interestingly, many of the interviewed producers equate ‘people of color’ with ‘African-American,’ ignoring the underrepresentation of Asian-Americans, Latina-Americans, and Native-Americans.”
Here, Davis unwittingly displays a touch of ethnocentricity of her own: Who says the models need to be American at all?
Oluchi is African.
Jessica is half Chinese, half Portuguese, from Australia.
These ladies are from Brazil.
Even the lily-white chicks are from Eastern Europe and New Zealand and the Netherlands and Russia and Spain and France.
I admit, this is just a “gotcha” on my part. Davis’s points—that other races are poorly represented—stands. But it’s an interesting slip. In calling for an openness to the world’s races, she accidentally ignores the non-America world.
• I think she overplays her hand a little.
Something strikes me as very 90s-university-social-critique about this book. I think there are good points to make about sexuality and gender roles in a study of the swimsuit issue. But:
“Feminist critiques of Sports Illustrated generally, and its swimsuit issue in particular, need to address the contemporary components of hegemonic masculinity. As feminists of both genders attempt to reduce aggression and violence that injures women and men, those who support hegemonic masculinity help to produce this violence in sport, homes, and wars.”
Is she linking the swimsuit issue to domestic violence and war??
I guess a more fair description is that she sees it as part of a larger tapestry that includes violence—not that there’s a direct link between Judit Masco in a bikini and Desert Storm. But it does seem like she’s relying on the swimsuit issue to do a lot of heavy lifting in some major global issues.
• Davis may have missed a big story.
She references Media Watch, an organization dedicated to fighting sexism in the media. But—unless I missed it—she doesn’t mention that Media Watch was founded by this woman:
Ann Simonton was the cover girl of the 1974 swimsuit issue. Later she left the industry to become a feminist activist, and she is quite anti-swimsuit issue.
Maybe Davis didn’t know about the link. I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t have explored that detail—it seems custom tailored to her book.
There’s a whole section on the swimsuit issue as “tourism” and the exotification of other cultures—locals as props and stereotypes—that ties in directly with this controversy from the “seven continents” issue. But I sadly don’t have the time to go deeply into that section.
Anyway, if you are interested, and it’s at your local library, check it out. It’s a quick, interesting read. I respect the fact that Davis explicitly states that she doesn’t want to equate “feminism” with “anti-sex,” and her approach makes sure to keep the critiques deeper than “pictures of naked ladies are wrong.”
Friday, April 3, 2015
Happy Birthday, Aline Nakashima
This Japanese/Brazilian/Spanish/Portuguese beauty is a girl I wish I had featured more on this blog.
Though her birth date is inconsistent even on her own Wikipedia page, I believe the consensus is that she's 33 today.
• • •
Bonus, non-SI bikini video from her website:Aline Nakashima | Beach Dream from Mediatropics on Vimeo.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
When Stars Were Entertaining June...
So the World Cup has begun in Brazil. Seems like as good a time as any to post a couple of these!
Go, soccer ball kicking guys!
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Upton Fatigue
Interesting observation: When I happened across the Kate Upton Easter Bunny video last weekend, my knee-jerk reaction was, “Again?”
Maybe Kate is a teensy bit overexposed.
These two stories were side-by-side on my Yahoo news feed the other morning:
One story is a video about Kate’s appearance as a sexy nun in the Three Stooges movie.
The other addresses whether she wore a dress better or worse than Mila Kunis.
True, she’s referred to as “model” in both headlines. And true, the fashion critic gives Mila the edge in the red-dress-off. But it’s telling that, according to the list of “labels” on the right of this screen, Kate has been featured in more posts (25) than any other model on this blog. (With this post, she leapfrogs Irina Shayk’s 24.) This is a girl who came on the SI radar barely a year ago. Perhaps we’re a little oversaturated with her?
In honor of her sexy habit, maybe I’ll declare a Kate Lent. Do you think I can go six weeks without posting about her?
Goodbye for now, Kate! See you after May 26!
Meanwhile, let’s yield the floor to some models I’ve neglected.
Manon
Oluchi Onweagba
Melissa Baker
Aline Nakashima
Melissa Keller
Lorraine Pascale
Lujan Fernandez
Maybe Kate is a teensy bit overexposed.
These two stories were side-by-side on my Yahoo news feed the other morning:
One story is a video about Kate’s appearance as a sexy nun in the Three Stooges movie.
The other addresses whether she wore a dress better or worse than Mila Kunis.
True, she’s referred to as “model” in both headlines. And true, the fashion critic gives Mila the edge in the red-dress-off. But it’s telling that, according to the list of “labels” on the right of this screen, Kate has been featured in more posts (25) than any other model on this blog. (With this post, she leapfrogs Irina Shayk’s 24.) This is a girl who came on the SI radar barely a year ago. Perhaps we’re a little oversaturated with her?In honor of her sexy habit, maybe I’ll declare a Kate Lent. Do you think I can go six weeks without posting about her?
Goodbye for now, Kate! See you after May 26!
Meanwhile, let’s yield the floor to some models I’ve neglected.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Brazilian Bikini Line
BroBible.com has made a list of 50 great Brazilian bikini models, and as you can imagine, there’s a healthy helping of SI girls included. These are “under the radar” models, and Ana Beatriz Barros and Izabel Goulart are disqualified right from the title: “The 50 Hottest Brazilian Bikini Models Not Named Adriana, Gisele, Alessandra, Izabel, or Ana Beatriz.”
(There are, however, five Fernandas.)
It’s a gorgeous list, surveying the bikini-clad bounty of that astonishing country. Though it’s really 49 models, since (as with last year’s 100 Hottest Brunette Lingerie Models) there’s a double. Jeisa Chiminazzo appears twice, at #17 and #50.
#10 Elisandra Tomacheski
(Not technically a full-fledged SI model. She was one of the models Jessica Perez beat out to make her debut in the 2012 issue. But Elisandra is pretty dreamy, so I'll let her in.)
#11 Ana Paula Araujo
#16 Fernanda Motta
#17 Jeisa Chiminazzo
#18 Daniella Sarahyba
#22 Michelle Alves
#24 Fernanda Tavares
#25 Aline Nakashima
#27 Juliana Martins
#28 Raica Oliveira
#38 Isabeli Fontana
#41 Yasmin Brunet
#50 Jeisa Chiminazzo (oops)
You know what? I'm glad Jeisa is in here twice. I wanted her to return after her 2008 debut, but she vanished. She’ll be featured on these pages as a one-hit wonder one day.
(There are, however, five Fernandas.)
It’s a gorgeous list, surveying the bikini-clad bounty of that astonishing country. Though it’s really 49 models, since (as with last year’s 100 Hottest Brunette Lingerie Models) there’s a double. Jeisa Chiminazzo appears twice, at #17 and #50.
(Not technically a full-fledged SI model. She was one of the models Jessica Perez beat out to make her debut in the 2012 issue. But Elisandra is pretty dreamy, so I'll let her in.)
You know what? I'm glad Jeisa is in here twice. I wanted her to return after her 2008 debut, but she vanished. She’ll be featured on these pages as a one-hit wonder one day.
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