BIKINI APATHY: This year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue arrived in my mailbox about a week ago and... I've barely even looked at it.
There once was a time when the arrival of the annual swimsuit edition was something I looked forward to for months- especially what with the Kathy Ireland/Elle MacPherson/Paulina Poriskova editions of my junior high years, when I had never seen anything so racy either in a magazine or real life. In seventh grade I even brought the issue to school, where it was confiscated by the assistant principal and returned- the following day.
But now that I'm an adult, and with the pop culture that I'm surrounded with on a daily basis, what's so special about the swimsuit issue? I already get a swimsuit issue in the mail every month (it's called Maxim) and besides, for anyone with access to any type of pornography (from hardcore to Playboy), models in swimsuits are redundant, if not completely inadequete.
I'm not here to discuss the neverending battle over the morality of the swimsuit issue between feminists and males who love to gawk at bikini-clad babes. As evidenced by Maxim, Christina Aguilera, "Are You Hot," Jenna Jameson endorsing Pony, T.A.T.U., and just about everything else in TV, movies, or anywhere else in American pop culture, that battle's been over now for at least a decade. Though as always I am looking forward to SI's letters page two weeks after the swimsuit issue, which is always one of the better reads of the year.
Don't get me wrong- the swimsuit issue is sexy, and I certainly enjoy looking at bikini babes as much as the next guy. But there's no doubting that it's lost much of its cache over the years, simply because American culture has passed it by. Perhaps SI should take the advice doled out by then-teammates Kevin Garnett and Stephon Marbury at the time of the launch of ESPN The Magazine in 1998: "Please, no swimsuit issue. ALL NUDE. Tastefully done, but definitely: ALL NUDE."