“Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition is an annual publication of scantily clad women in a magazine where 70% of its readership comes from men. It caters to male fantasies and is undoubtedly a form of soft pornography. Growing up as a Sports Illustrated subscriber, the swimsuit edition had to be opted out of online ahead of time, and I was instructed to be wary of SI Swim’s ads and links littered throughout its print and digital media. The brand touts itself as empowering by using beachside bikini modeling to drive clicks and increase revenue.”
The values of Brigham Young University and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit never seemed compatible, but on Thursday of homecoming week, a collaboration that once seemed impossible happened.
BYU put on a four-hour “TogetHER Women’s Empowerment Event,” in which BYU Athletics and the Big 12 partnered with SI Swim and welcomed three Swimsuit models to the campus to present at the event. BYU Athletics didn’t merely host a few women who had done “work” with Sports Illustrated; BYU also sponsored a post featuring the models trying CougarTails, promoting the SI brand by tagging the illicit account. I never thought I’d see the Y and SI Swim logo side-by-side. Still, BYU was proud to promote this “unique pairing,” according to senior associate athletic director Liz Darger.
Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition is an annual publication of scantily clad women in a magazine where 70% of its readership comes from men. It caters to male fantasies and is undoubtedly a form of soft pornography. Growing up as a Sports Illustrated subscriber, the swimsuit edition had to be opted out of online ahead of time, and I was instructed to be wary of SI Swim’s ads and links littered throughout its print and digital media. The brand touts itself as empowering by using beachside bikini modeling to drive clicks and increase revenue.
This collaboration invites the question: Should there be standards for the individuals BYU endorses on important subjects like empowerment? Is the Swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated uplifting in any way, shape, or form? If a high-ranking BYU official walked into a professor’s office and saw an SI Swimsuit magazine on their desk, how would they react? For a university that now will not hire new full-time employees if they have viewed pornography in the past year, bringing in SI Swimsuit is highly hypocritical or, at best, puzzling.
Defenders of the BYU/SI Swim collaboration will say that this is undoubtedly a chance for women to support other women and that the models bring diverse perspectives to campus. However, if the outcome is encouraging women to live contrary to gospel standards, then BYU should collaborate more selectively in the future.
Others will say BYU had “no choice” as it was a Big 12-sponsored event for the new conference members. But is this the same BYU that’s said no to government funding to conserve its standards? Is this the BYU that refuses to play sports on Sundays to the point that if appropriate accommodations aren’t made, they will not hesitate to forfeit? Or, most hypocritically, is this the university whose dress and grooming standards are in a different stratosphere from what SI Swim promotes?
Every year, BYU Athletics pushes its boundaries more and more as it treads the line between being the cool kids in school and upholding its unique values that make BYU different from other religious universities. In our first year in the Big 12, this pressure to “fit in” will only increase, and the likelihood of declining to host an event unaligned with BYU values will decrease. If Brigham Young University’s sponsoring organization teaches that we should seek only the things that are “virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy,” we must be more intentional in the guests we welcome to campus and the brands we promote. In this SI Swim flop, BYU Athletics chose the potential of an empowering message above associating itself with a messenger that hypersexualizes women with the goal of male pleasure.
I just hope we aren’t inviting the CEO of Budweiser to give the next devotional.
Written by: Josh Newman
Guest Contributor at the Cougar Chronicle
The Cougar Chronicle is an independent student-run newspaper and is not affiliated with Brigham Young University or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
AMEN! Let’s hear what the new President of BYU has to say about this…. Followed by Pres Russel M Nelson’s take on it….