I saw two really good reasons to pick up the 2011 swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. Just kidding, I’m being crass, but seriously it is a hard magazine to miss this time of the year. While all other magazines are running the same old “Get flat abs,” Secrets to a slim stomach” and “Tighten that tummy,” Sports Illustrated is blowing them away in sales by staying simple. The cover features that year’s selected model, suggestively posed in a teeny tiny bikini. The cover is bright, colorful, the rest of the text is small and black besides the magazines name which is well hidden behind the models face and flowing hair. So much so that you almost forget it reads “Sports Illustrated.” Sports? Really? Because this looks more like an issue of Cosmopolitan or Shape than an issue of one of the manliest magazines on the market.
It really is a genius concept, and as much as my inner feminist cringes at the air brushed photos of nearly nude women, the journalist in me gets excited. In today’s dying print industry, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition is one of the best, if not the best selling, issue of any magazine. Each year about a million copies are sold. Since its debut in 1964 the swimsuit editions alone have grossed over $1 billion dollars, according to CNBC.
It’s not just the magazine that does well this time of the year but also the models, the swimsuits, accessories and photographers involved. Being features in the swimsuit edition is a fast way to boost anyone’s career. Not only because sex sells but because of the quality of the photographs taken in exotic locations. So sure, while its easy to turn up my nose at the overtly objectifying concept, I gotta say, it works.
No comments:
Post a Comment