A Little Sunshine Lights Up Dreary World of Sports

Football is over, unless you count the USFL (Umpteen Simoleons for Flutie League). Baseball is still a ways down the road. Pro basketball and hockey are only limbering up for their summer all-comers playoff tournaments.

Winter is here, film at 11, and it’s beginning to seem that the national pastime is probing snowbanks with a long stick to locate the car or the dog.

But take heart. Into this cold and dreary athletic void comes a ray of sunshine. Sports Illustrated’s 22nd annual swimsuit issue hits the newsstands this week. Page after page of color photos of some tropical paradise. Lagoons, sand dunes, no typhoons. Observant readers will note that in each scenic photo, usually in the foreground, is a young woman in a swimsuit. Thus, the name of the issue.

The sunshine issue, as it is known to SI staffers, has become as much a part of the national sports calendar as opening day, the Super Bowl, the Indy 500 or Freddie Blassie’s birthday.

SI’s weekly circulation is 2,625,000, but this issue will sell close to a million extra copies. Why?

For some of us, the sunshine issue sets a mood, breaks through the winter gloom, inspires us to daydream of faraway islands, palm trees swaying and warm waves curling, of hammocks and snorkels and pina coladas. It signals the changing of seasons, reminds us that spring is just around the corner.

However, there’s no denying that the models are often attractive and the swimsuits sometimes daring. Those readers who are inclined to leer and lust apparently enjoy the issue as much as those of us who truly appreciate the background scenery. To each his own.

There is a third classification of readers, those who say they object to a sports magazine publishing girlie pics thinly disguised as a travel and fashion layout. Protest letters pour in from, among others, mothers of 12-year-old sons.

“I have a 12-year-old son,” pointed out Jule Campbell, the SI associate editor who has planned and executed the last 21 sunshine issues. “I asked him what he thought of it. He said, ‘It’s OK.’ I said, ‘No, really. What do you really think of it?’ He said, ‘It’s OK.’ ”

So much for marketing research.

“There’s no way it (the issue) can be considered suggestive or in bad taste,” said Jane Gilchrist, SI publicity director. “These are real bathing suits, you understand, not something made up to appeal to someone’s prurient interests.”

Of course, one person’s real bathing suit is another person’s prurient-interest piquer.

At least the magazine doesn’t try to pass off the sunshine issue as a straight fashion forecast or vacation guide, although the issue always contains a lengthy travel feature and a related adventure piece. Who can forget the in-depth story on the snook fish?

And the SI people do execute the issue with some style. Campbell personally selects about 800 swimsuits for the shooting trip, and even designs a few herself.

“We try to fit the suit to the environment,” she said. “Last year, for instance, we had white, sequined suits on white sand dunes. You don’t just take a swimsuit and a girl and throw her on the beach and shoot.”

Not if you have any class.

Also, Jule doesn’t take swimsuits and throw ‘em on those human twigs that pass as high-fashion models. Campbell’s hand-picked models tend to look more athletic than anemic. This adds to the controversy, since some parents seem to feel that if their 12-year-old son must be exposed to pictures of girls in bathing suits, it would be better if the girls didn’t have things like breasts.

A newer criticism is sexism. While the magazine itself is devoting an ever-increasing amount of coverage to female sports and athletes, the swimsuit issue has never featured a male model. Will that ever happen?

“A lot of women have asked for equal time, but I don’t think so,” Campbell said. “It (the sunshine issue) is only one time a year. If women want to look at men, they can look at every other issue.”

That shot down my plan to sell Campbell on an extra swimsuit issue featuring the men of the Times sports department. Too bad. We would work for scale, Jule, and let you choose the island. All we would ask is that you don’t just throw us down on the sand and shoot.