Sports Illustrated Magazine has compiled its 2016 Swimsuit Edition and, this year, there is a big change. There are still beach scenes and colorful swimsuits, but the models this year are breaking barriers. In this year’s swimsuit edition, Sports Illustrated is celebrating diverse body types. As part of their campaign, they have included the slogan ‘Swimsuits for All’ and they have certainly lived up to that slogan in the magazine.
Ashley Graham, a curvy, size 16 model, is a featured model in the Swimsuit Edition. She was named SI’s Rookie of the Year in 2015 and she only starred in an advertisement in the issue. This year, sports Illustrated made her the featured model. Posed alongside Graham is another featured model breaking barriers, Philomena Kwao.
Kwao is breaking barriers as being both a curvy model and a model of color. Nicola Griffin is featured in a Sports Illustrated advertisement for the ‘Swimsuits for All’ campaign. Griffin is 56 years old, making her the oldest model in any Sports Illustrated issue. Though she was only in an advertisement, she could have a promising breakthrough similar to Ashley Graham.
It is nice to see a magazine-especially one that has always used traditional models-beginning to break barriers. Almost all magazines feature skinnier models, and while there is nothing wrong with that, it has been taken to the extreme.
Models have been forced to live with unhealthy bodies, and the viewers have been given the wrong idea of a healthy body image. While some magazines have begun to remove photoshopping from their models, that is not enough. The entire body of a model needs to be natural and unaltered, and Sports Illustrated is finally beginning to show that.
While it is a good thing to praise Sports Illustrated for beginning to break stereotypical model barriers, it is really ourselves that need praise, too. When you really stop to think about it, it is our generation that has ultimately caused Sports Illustrated to begin proudly using diverse models.
When we finally began realizing how extreme and unhealthy traditional models and the body images associated with them were, we began to change the fashion industry. Whether we were aware of it or not, we have been working against these negative images for a while.
We have called out other companies and magazines for using unhealthy photos of models and spread positive body image movements among social media. We slowly began to accept our own diverse bodies, but the companies and model agencies did not. However, Sports Illustrated has finally broken past such traditional barriers.
Instead of being shamed, Sports Illustrated is showing that curvy women are model worthy too. It shows that models of color can look just as good in magazines as everyone else. It shows that older models are still as beautiful as the younger ones.
This year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition is a small step in the right direction regarding magazines and models. However, thanks to our body positive movements on the Internet, the magazine has gotten a lot of well-deserved attention. Hopefully other magazines will catch on to SI’s idea, and we will all realize that we are model-worthy, no matter what we look like.
Jill Augustine
Deputy Viewpoints Editor
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