Life before breast implants: What naked girls used to look like

In my house, my hippie mother felt that it was more natural for me to see movies with naked people making love (that's the term 8 out of 10 hippie mothers preferred) than movies where people were trying to kill each other. As it was, I was totally accustomed to seeing breasts on our early '80s cable channels, nipples of various sizes bouncing around across our 19-inch screen, and I knew that men liked to look at boobs and hips and butts and the dark thickets in a girl's "area" but it wasn't until we had a rummage sale one summer afternoon and her live-in boyfriend Larry pulled out a moldering box of vintage Playboys that I really understood. It wasn't just looking at naked boobs on the television. It was somehow more private than that. Sure, this naked girl might have been replicated in 500,000 copies, but somehow, at that moment, it was just her and the viewer. These pages, slick as beetle skins, the eyes wearing impossible amounts of mascara, looking up at the viewer, imploring somehow, begging to be looked at. That's when I really got a sense of how powerful a girl's body could be when displayed on the glossy pages of a magazine.

Erin over at Product Fiend recently talked about Sports Illustrated's cover vault, specifically the vintage Swimsuit Edition covers. I've never really seen the point of the Swimsuit Edition, even though I know that it makes people drool like crazy. I mean, there's nothing SPORTY about staring at women in swimsuits, and if you want to see the bush, there are magazines dedicated to that purpose. And at least the Victoria's Secret catalog was free. So I took another look and...wow.

If you want to have your eyes opened on the changing dimensions of the average SI Swimsuit Edition cover model, simply compare 2008's Marissa Miller to 1971's Tannia Rubiano or 1967's Lynn Tyndall. Seriously, you need to click on those links. I don't know about you but I miss seeing covers that celebrate women with amazing breasts like these. I need to be reminded that at one time, girls with big boobs had hips to match (image NSFW) and it was all good. Perspective, is what I think I'm getting here. And I have stupid Sports Illustrated to thank for it, except I'll probably never admit that anywhere else.

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