In the Palm of Your Sand

Like all red-blooded American males, I look to the swimsuit issue for one thing: tips on using coconut oil in my day-to-day life. Swim Daily came through with recommended products for hair care, skin care, and, um, lube.

So let us celebrate that most platonic ideal of tropical fruit, the coconut, which obviously makes several appearances in our favorite magazine. In fact, I bet there are lots more examples I’ve missed.

And just for the obligatory “Put the Lime in the Coconut” reference…

Re-Vita-lized

Some great news dropped this week! 2020 will mark the return of two of my favorite models of this decade, two girls I thought had disappeared forever from SI.

Vita Sidorkina …

… and Emily DiDonato …

… are shooting in Wyoming, for some reason.

That means this graphic is now happily obsolete.

I don’t think it hit me how long Emily has been gone! She skipped three swimsuit issues.

Those three issues, but the way, exactly line up with Danielle Harrington’s three appearances.

And she’s back too, in case you were harboring any conspiracy theories about Emily and Danielle being the same person.

It seems like just yesterday that the 2019 issue came out, and it kind of was. The May release screwed up my internal swimsuit clock. I wonder if 2020 will be a return to February, or if we have another long wait until spring.

Calendar Girls, Revisited: 1994

Ashley Richardson was busy this year, despite the birth of relatively few SI girls.


On March 20, she brought us Vita.

On April 16, she paired up with Vendela and brought us Kate Wasley.

And on October 26, hypnotist Britta Dubbels conjured Rose Bertram. (Thank you, Britta.)

Butt Appreciation Day 2018

Over the last week, I called out Babs and Lais as competing for the coveted title of Swimsuitologist's Favorite Current Model. I thought I'd add a third contender. The knee-melting Vita Sidorkina.

In a couple of very special shots from 2018.

(SI. How many times do I have to tell you? Find a better place for your stupid logo.)

Anyway, I'd happily have this triumvirate as a nice, solid core of the swimsuit issue for the foreseeable future.

That’s the Way the Rookie Crumbles 2018

There was a pretty high retention rate from 2017 to 2018. Out of seven girls, five stuck around.

Bianca was the Rookie of the Year, so she was pretty much a lock.

Danielle, who I have to admit I thought was unlikely to return, came back with a great cover.

Lais, Myla, and Vita were three of my favorites, and I love having them back.

The newly minted one-hit wonders are Kelly Gale and Mia Kang.

I never got a chance to get into Mia Kang.

But Kelly Gale is a huge loss.

Miss her already.

Get a High-Cut, Hippy!

I feel I’ve droned on a bit about the high-cut swimsuits of the 80s and how they shaped my interest in the female body. But I’m impressed with how well 2018 has been infused with that decade.

It’s not just the cut of the suits. It’s the color schemes, patterns, accessories — maybe even the type of posing. I don’t know enough about modeling or photography to delve into the secret sauce, but I get a deep stirring of déjà vu at how well they invoke the decade I discovered the swimsuit issue.

These shots of Vita and Kate look for all the world like posters I might have hung in my bedroom in 1987.

And Hailey in this dream of neon yellow and grape-candy purple and retro roller skates makes me feel like I’m in seventh grade again.

But yeah, that high-cut thigh. Rookie Chase Carter even touches on it a bit in her Uncovered video. (She also makes a point of name-dropping Elle Macpherson, so that earns her additional points with me.)

I like Chase. She strikes me as a cuter Hannah Davis.

She also gives us this year's top-but-no-bottom entry.

Anyway, it’s high-cut heaven. And some girls seem determined to go above and beyond. There’s a lot of grabbing the hips and pulling skyward, as if to say “You want to see an acute angle? I’ll show you an acute angle!”

This Vogue article from last summer suggests this isn’t just pastiche. We might be in the midst of a legitimate reinvigoration of this cut. (A few familiar SI faces and bodies pop up in that article.)

Count me in.

Play Freeboob!

According to legend, the ancient mythical Amazons had one breast removed to allow them to become better archers.

I can only assume that was the inspiration behind these numbers sported by Kate Bock and Barbara Palvin.

These rather impractical one-piecers each cover only the right breast, leaving the left to be covered modestly by the palm of a hand.

They’re not good for beach volleyball, I guess is what I’m saying.

They’re not the first single-breast suits the swimsuit issue has shown us. Just last year, Hailey Clauson shared this number with us.

Now it’s the right breast that is free while the left one is hidden from view.

A couple years earlier, in 2015, Sara Sampaio and Sam Hoopes flaunted a couple of breasts: one left and one right.

Ten years earlier, in 2005, Anne V and Carolyn Murphy flaunted the same breast in possibly the same swimsuit.

And let us travel all the way back to 1990, when the lovely Elle Macpherson showed us what was right. (Marisa Miller followed suit in 2004.)

I have a feeling there are other examples that I wasn’t able to dig up. If I find more, I’ll update this post. But the current tally is 6 right breasts exposed, 3 left breasts exposed. (Or, if you're a pessimist, 3 right and 6 left concealed.)

But obviously, in order to be actual swimsuits, some additional cover would have to be added.

One that note, another theme of 2018 seems to be “mesh one-piece swimsuits so scandalous that they need to be worn with bikini bottoms underneath.”

See? Swimsuitologist is really just a fashion blog at heart.

• • •

You know what? Over a year later, I'm going to take the suggestion left in the comments by an anonymous tipster and include Kim Alexis here. Even though her back is to us, I think we can speculate that she's revealing her left and concealing her right. This is the suit referred to in the magazine, mysteriously, as "one-piece topless," and maybe that's what they meant.

Welcome, Kim!