I mean, I get it. I do get it. It's all about sales. It's about appealing to people who otherwise don't care about baseball, free agents, or next season's playoff predictions. I'm not going to get out my Sharpie markers and poster board to launch a full-on protest of the magazine or even that one special issue. And I'm not saying I will never flip through the pages. But I will roll my eyes and get up on a soapbox about it, especially if someone has some big, long justification for why it really is in line with the magazine's focus on athleticism.
Since I'm not going to participate in the sales of the swimsuit edition, I didn't realize until I saw this post on The F-Word that there was one more irritating intersection of sales and sexist exploitation in this year's issue. This ad by Arby's appeared in the issue, which the F-Word says is just one more example of "how women’s bodies are depicted as pieces of meat for male consumption" and I agree.
Thanks for adding insult to implants, SI. A magazine's got to do what a magazine's got to do to sell magazines....and swimsuits and sandwiches, right?
Maybe I am not reading enough, but I've never seen a women's health, sports, or fitness publication with a special man-thong issue featuring models that are not athletes. Have you?
Maybe I am jaded by all the ads I've analyzed over the years, all of the writing, reading, research I've done on body image. Maybe it's getting close to swimsuit season for us real women with bodies bigger than an XS size.
Or maybe, it's time to stop looking inside this issue of this magazine altogether. Clearly, there's nothing here that's empowering or insightful or aiding our body image. Just the nagging, irritating question of what kind of bikini that roast beef sandwich might wear if it was an "athlete."
[via F-Word]
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