Happy Irina-versary

Yesterday, I slipped in a pic of Irina Shayk’s posterior, so that post and this post tip the all-time Swimsuitologist scale in her favor: Irina Shayk 64, Kate Upton 62. In a way, it makes sense. This was Irina’s tenth consecutive appearance in the swimsuit issue, tying her with her fellow Russian beauty Anne V.

How did the rest of her 2007 rookie class fare?

Ana Paula Araujo (1 year)

Raica Oliveira (1 year)

Selita Ebanks (2 years)

Tori Praver (3 years)

Bar Refaeli (5 years)

Julie Henderson (7 years)

Like I did with Anne V, I counted up the number of models Irina has shared the magazine with. I have Irina at 81, leaving her a little short of Anne’s 88. (Anne was helped by the All-Star Reunion issue, which came out in 2006, just before Irina’s time.)

• • •

Adaora • Nina Agdal • Lily Aldridge • Ana Paulia Araujo • Melissa Baker • Natasha Barnard • Ana Beatriz Barros • Rose Bertram • Beyonce • Kate Bock • Yasmin Brunet • Jeisa Chiminazzo • Hailey Clauson • Shannan Click • Kim Cloutier • Hannah Davis • Sonia Dara • Brooklyn Decker • Yamila Diaz • Cintia Dicker • Emily DiDonato • Zoe Duchesne • Lucia Dvorska • Selita Ebanks • Hannah Ferguson • Kenza Fourati • Esti Ginzburg • Jessica Gomes • Izabel Goulart • Ashley Graham • Quiana Grant • Kirby Griffin • Gigi Hadid • Melissa Haro • Jessica Hart • Erin Heatherton • Bregje Heinen • Julie Henderson • Samantha Hoopes • Marloes Horst • Chanel Iman • Heidi Klum • Bo Krsmanovic • Robyn Lawley • Damaris Lewis • Jarah Mariano • Lauren Mellor • Ariel Meredith • Alyssa Miller • Marisa Miller • Tanya Mityushina • Genevieve Morton • Fernanda Motta • Aline Nakashima • Raica Oliveira • Oluchi Onweagba • Julie Ordon • Barbara Palvin • Jessica Perez • Dominique Piek • Tori Praver • Emily Ratajkowsi • Bar Refaeli • Crystal Renn • Sofia Resing • Hilary Rhoda • Kelly Rohrbach • Sarah Sampaio • Daniella Sarahyba • Ashley Smith • Solveig • Fernanda Tavares • Chrissy Teigen • Yesica Toscanini • Kate Upton • Cris Urena • Anne V • Valerie van der Graaf • Veronika Varekova • Michelle Vawer • Jessica White

• • •

Now, there’s no need to assume Irina will call it quits after just one decade. Kathy Ireland has the all-time record at 12 years (including 11 in a row). Does Irina have her eyes on that mark?

 

Watch your back, Ireland.

The Implications of Skimpification

Here’s a BBC article on the historical shrinking of swimwear, in conjunction with an exhibit at the Fashion and Textile Museum.

I don't care how much fabric is in those suits. These are sexy photos.

• • •

I’ve been contemplating why girls in swimsuits are sexier to me than girls in lingerie. I think I’ve stumbled upon something.

A bikini and a bra/panties combo are strikingly similar. They’re the same size and the same shape, and they cover the exact same areas of a woman’s body. But there’s a philosophical difference.

Lingerie is something a woman strips down to. A bikini is the outfit she puts on. The nearly identical articles of clothing are arrived at from opposite directions.

There’s something secretive about lingerie. In real life, seeing a woman dressed like that means she’s choosing to reveal herself to you in an intimate setting. (Which, make no mistake, is mind-blowingly sexy.)

But a swimsuit is worn publicly. The same amount of skin is shown, but there’s an air of “no big deal, I’m just swimming” about a bikini. I’m not sure I’ve put my finger on it, but it might be that the same level of sexuality is given a fun, everyday, celebratory personality to it.

It might account for that sense of “innocence” I have about the swimsuit issue that gets scandalized whenever a more overtly sexual approach pops up.

PSA: This shouldn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it: Don’t gawk at swimsuit-clad women in public places. It’s a different situation. The models in SI are tacitly inviting your eyes. Women at the pool are minding their own business. Sure: glance, notice. But don’t be a freaking creep.

This is important to me, because I want a world where respecting women and finding them hot are not presumed to be mutually exclusive. And I never want a woman to regret wearing a bikini.

There was a Tumblr blog, now sadly gone, called Fuck Yeah Swimsuit Models. It featured an SI photo per day, sometimes with commentary. I noticed some of the photos were tagged “classic.” I assumed this referred to photos from a certain bygone golden era of the magazine, or possibly to photos the person running the blog particularly liked.

But then I noticed the blog included a definition of the term “classic.” Thanks to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, I can share this definition with you:

Classic, as a tag on this blog, refers to a very specific kind of shot: the model is wearing (all of) a real bikini, on a sunny beach. It’s just the original, simple premise of the swimsuit issue itself, no gimmicks or partially-disrobed women. Another way to look at it: classic shots are straightforward enough that they could actually be used by a viewer to judge the swimsuit itself. (As if anyone would ever try to do that.)

Tori Praver, would you demonstrate?

NOT CLASSIC: Missing a top.

NOT CLASSIC: Missing a bottom.

NOT CLASSIC: Missing a beach.

NOT CLASSIC: The suit is a lie.

Classic.

There you have it. The swimsuit, as it appears in the wild.

Hannah and Her Cover

SI revealed the cover last night/this morning! It's Hannah Davis.

She looks lovely, if perhaps over-Photoshopped. I hope this isn't indicative of a slide back from last year, when they showed some restraint with the retouching.

Congrats, Hannah!

She joins Tyra, Petra, Marisa, and Bar in an elite sisterhood of thumb-hooks and other bikini bottom interaction.

Bar Glasses

Bar Refaeli can’t seem to stop making offensive commercials.

First, she peddled her bill-paying phone app using (of course) cannibalistic white slavery.

Now her fashion eyewear company warns of the dangers of not realizing how plump a woman is.

The first one was bizarre and dark and outlandish. This one is crummy, a cheap joke at the expense of plus-size women.

Yes, Bar, you’re hot. You don’t have to use that to put other people down.

I Spend Too Much Time Looking at Swimsuit Models

And here’s how I can tell.

I went down an internet rabbit hole and found this photoshoot with Bar Refaeli (and fellow hottie Candice Swanepoel):

…and I noticed that it takes place on the same Hollywood Hills balcony that Christie Brinkley lounges on in the SI Swim Air New Zealand safety video.

That’s a lucky deck.

Emily Ratajkowski’s Guitar Pickini

Once again, the bodypainting section of the swimsuit issue recreated shots from previous years. Last year, it was covers. This year, they delved inside the issues in search of suits that represented the five decades.

Just like in 2011, all the painted girls were rookies.

I thought I might spend the week looking at them in reverse chronological order (which will line up nicely with Topless Tuesday and One-Piece Wednesday).

The suit painted on to Emily is one that I neglected to include in my “Same Suit, Different Babe” post from last September. In 2007, this guitar pick bikini was draped over the lovely bodies of both Irina Shayk and Bar Refaeli.

(Though if you look closely, and I have, you’ll see that Irina’s top is a little different from Bar’s. The picks in Bar’s have white markings, while the ones in Irina’s have red.)

And you can also find Marisa Miller wearing it, though I’m not sure if she wore it in the issue. The only photo I could find is this cover of Ocean Drive magazine. (That Ocean Drive is also from 2007, so my assumption is that the photo is from SI.)

Irina Shayk is still an active SI model, meaning this is the first time the original girl is in the same issue as a throwback recreation of her own shoot.

In fact, Bar and Marisa join Irina in the 50th Anniversary “Legends” section. So there are four pickini models in the same issue.

In my opinion, Emily's bodypaint shots are her best photos in the issue. She pulls it off nicely.

Let’s Call It a Draw

For the second time, Swim Daily has featured the drawings of comic book artist and swimsuit model aficionado Howard Shum.

(Here’s the first installment.)

They’re nice drawings—cool style, clean lines—but for the most part they don’t look particularly like the models. They’re just kind of generic hot girls.

For example, without cheating, can you tell who these SI models are?*

Maybe that’s not the point of these—maybe they’re not supposed to be actual caricatures. But there are some good SI model caricatures out there that I’ve stumbled across from time to time.

This is a great Brooklyn Decker drawing by a Mexico-based artist who goes by “VADELATE” on DeviantArt:

Pixar story artist Bobby Rubio seems particularly obsessed with Kate Upton. Here she is in her Sobe staring contest ad:

…and doing the harlem shake with Michelle Jenneke:

…and, for some reason, the cat daddy with Yo Gabba Gabba! characters:

There used to be a drawing message board called The Drawing Board where artists would periodically give themselves assignments of drawing beautiful women. I believe that is where I first saw this Jessica Gomes by Michael Birkhofer:

And this is a lovely Irina Shayk by Serge Birault, who apparently didn’t even know who she was and just selected the model for his “sexy woman” needs:

• • •

Tangentially related is the curious case of Greg Land, a comic book artist who has come under no small amount of ridicule for the amount of tracing and ripping-off he seems to do. Of interest to this blog are this picture of Black Canary, clearly swiped from this exquisite 1996 Valeria Mazza photo:

…and this Sojourn cover, clearly a “flip horizontal” tracing of Yamila Diaz’s 2002 cover:

*In order, Bar Refaeli, Brooklyn Decker, Jessica Hart, Marisa Miller.