Kate Upson, Skimpy Bathing Suits, and a "Changing Culture"

In 1964, the very first swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated was released. 

Now, in it's fiftieth year, it has left many wondering, Where Have the SwimSuits Gone?

After Kate Upson revealed the cover earlier this week, the article wants to know "why has the swimsuit's presence in the issue diminished so much?" For fifty years Sports Illustrated has featured gorgeous women, flaunting it all on their covers, yet it seems each and every year, the bathing suits are getting smaller and smaller, leaving very little to the imagination. The article speculates as to why this is, stating, "simply that our culture has changed." In general, anyone going to the beach knows that bathing suits just aren't what they used to be. They also note that "the magazine industry started to become racier at the same time as the swimsuit edition." What I found particularly interesting from this article was that the sales from this one issue every year has now come to make up about 7 percent of SI's entire income. The popularity of the issue over the years, as stated in the article, has been in part due to it being more socially acceptable to have Sport's Illustrated laying around one's home over, say, Playboy. 

Now I can't say that I've ever read a single issue of Sports Illustrated, but when I saw this article, I had to wonder, has culture really "changed" all that much in the last fifty years. Sure, bathing suits are getting smaller, but the idea of displaying women in their bathing suits on magazine covers certainly hasn't. In Flores, Genders without borders, she discusses the cultural difference perspective, which says that aspects of one's identity, such as gender, is often seen as something is "stable and recognizable."So in the grand scheme of things fifty years isn't all that long, but it seems that the idea of what it means to be woman hasn't changed all that much. We still have this ideal that is set forth by these companies that women must aspire to that is hardly obtainable by the average woman and to top it off it's on a prominent men's magazine. While I'm sure that there are magazines that can be seen as objectifying men in the same sense, I can't think off any of the top of my head, or at the very least, one's that generate as much attention as Sports Illustrated (of course, if I'm wrong, please share!). I think again to this idea of rape culture. We keep perpetuating this idea that we need to be sexy while at the same time, when we do try to emulate that idea, women start getting blamed for being raped. It's this awful paradox that this culture has created and it seems no matter how far we seemed to have come, there is still this on going struggle to be equals.

What I also found interesting in this article was that Sports Illustrated is a more culturally accepted magazine that Playboy. While I think most of us can generally agree to that, again I have to wonder why? At what point do we draw the line? After looking through some of the bathing suits that have been worn through the last fifty years on the SI cover, I have to wonder, why even bother? How can a little triangle and shoe strings possibly be more acceptable than just walking around naked? But that's just me... 

So my closing questions I propose is how has this idea of gender changed over the years? Can they be seen as static in a culture, generally unchanging? Are women being objectified by being placed on these types of covers? What/are there magazines that do the same to men and do they have the same impact?