Tanaye White and Kathy Jacobs are the newly minted rookies for 2021, meaning I didn’t get my wish.
However, Tanaye was one of the girls I was rooting for in last year’s model search, so let’s consider it a delayed victory.
In fact, here’s a fun photo. Two future model search winners, Class of 2020 and Class of 2021, in their black-bikini’d glory.
Tanaye seems to have slimmed down and muscled up a bit since her 2019 model search photos, which is a bit of a shame. But that magnificent sphere of hair is new too, and I very much enjoy that.
Kathy is good looking. Pretty amazing body, regardless of her age.
This is a tired complaint I keep making, but we’ve discarded so many wonderful models after one year, or two years, or even zero years if they’re not selected from their model searches. Chase Carter, for example, grabbed me immediately, so that years later I’m still pining after what might have been.
None of this year’s candidates grabbed me like that.
The thing is, I don’t think they’re supposed to anymore. There’s clearly been a shift in what the swimsuit issue is trying to be.
Five years ago, in a post that touched on (then-)potential rookies Robin Lawley, Ashley Graham, and Marquita Pring, I wrote “I don’t think SI necessarily has a responsibility to change standards of beauty (they’re more in the business of harnessing those standards for profit).”
But now they seem to have taken up the cause of changing those standards of beauty. Trying to nudge the Overton window a bit.
As Tyra Banks said in this Fashionista article:
“Of course, it's male gaze. Duh. … But, it's not just that and so what I love about what's happening now is the woman looking at the swimsuit issue can see all of these different myriads of beauty that can possibly reflect her. … And the man can look at it and see not just what he was trained to like [by society], but go, 'why am I tingling when I'm looking at this photo of Hunter [McGrady] or Tara Lynn?' It's digging deep into what he truly is attracted to, but hasn't been trained to like."
And part of me, let’s call it my superego, thinks that’s good. I’m in favor of inclusivity, I’m in favor of opening up the standards of beauty so people don’t feel ostracized or inferior.
But there’s another part of me, let’s call it my id, that says “Why can’t the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue be the realm of impossibly beautiful women? That’s what the swimsuit issue is for. We all know it’s for fantasy purposes only. Fill it with Sara Sampaios and Chase Carters and Rose Bertrams and Raven Lyns and all the other girls we didn’t get enough of.”
I want my little island of unrealistic hotness.
MJ Day said in this Bustle interview:
"Kate [Upton], when she was on her first cover [in 2012] — people straight up called her fat. With this issue, people are coming after SI saying, 'Oh you're all about body diversity, but why is Kate Upton on the cover again?'" Day says. "I love that, because you know what that means? It means we have come so far in just five years."
This is a little different from my memory of Kate Upton’s arrival on the scene. I do remember people from the fashion world voicing the opinion that Kate wasn’t thin enough for their shows. But the red-blooded American hetero men of the world, the magazine’s ostensible audience? They immediately hailed her as their new bikini queen. I mean, it was unanimous. Everybody loved Kate.
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Her Highness. |
I’m not sure Kate Upton was really a swimsuit issue trailblazer. Robyn Lawley, introduced in 2015, was a significant step, though I felt that she had a very Ashley Richardson body.
Ashley Graham, 2016 — she was an iconoclast.
Anyway, I’m torn. I don’t want to be one of those “OH NO THE SJWS ARE TRYING TO MAKE BONERS ILLEGAL” idiots. But I do kind of miss the yearly injection of plain-old message-free hotness.
The “good clean dirty fun” of the swimsuit issue was what inspired this blog in the first place. There was something retro about it, not just as a throwback to earlier years of the swimsuit issue, but as a throwback to pinups in general, on teens’ bedroom walls and WWII fighter planes. Maybe I liked that it was something we as a society were “getting away with” to some extent, kind of a naughty alcove of old-fashioned cheesecake, with its smiles and sand and cleavage peeks.
