The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue: How It's Made For A Model
LatestOh, bikinis. Such small pieces of cloth that present such great potential for complication! What better occasion than the release of the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition to learn the secrets of a swimwear shoot?
The new Sports Illustrated contains a few genuine surprises. For starters, in addition to the expected men’s magazine types, like Brooklyn Decker and Tori Praver, there is more than a smattering of fashion models. Cintia Dicker and Anne Vyalitsyna, for example, are more known for work like this:
Cintia Dicker in 10
Anne Vyalitsyna in Numéro
Than this:
Dicker and Vyalitsyna each have a Sports Illustrated debut this year. As does Hilary Rhoda, interestingly enough. I might have thought her Estée Lauder contract would have created a conflict — it has a very upmarket brand identity, whereas Sports Illustrated has…a very, shall we say, broad appeal. But in a way it’s a perfect fit. Rhoda is well known for being athletic and in the interview with SI she’s one of the only models to respond to the sports-related questions with anything more than a verbal shrug. (As a Redskins fan, she thinks Clinton Portis is the best-looking athlete, and she talks about how, as a child, she and her brother shared a subscription to SI Kids.)
Shooting swimwear generally calls for a certain kind of model. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are two main requirements — and they’re conveniently located right next to one another! It’s always kind of amazing, as a model with next to nothing in the chest department, when I’m backstage at a show or shooting a story with other girls and suddenly someone’s changing and it’s like, Hello. We’re all pretty much the same proportions of tall and skinny, but then there’s that one girl who just has preposterously gorgeous, incongruously full breasts and, frankly, I can see why magazines like this exist to celebrate that. Girls with breasts can pretty much do it all within fashion, because almost any designer will always need at least one truly endowed model for a certain show look, beauty work doesn’t depend on your body at all, and they’re pretty much the only people who are ever called upon to advertise swimwear or lingerie.
But there’s a world of difference between selling swimwear to women and selling the idea of swimwear to heterosexual “men”. Caroline Trentini jumping in a bikini for American Vogue might be a picture of a woman in a swimsuit, but the intent of the photo and the understanding of sexuality it displays is entirely distinct from that presented in SI.
Even when she’s doing the pull-down-my-pants pose.