Jack points me to this ESPN.com article about how to get away with reading the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue without getting your wife or girlfriend mad at you. Well, I have an even better way: Find a wife or girlfriend who’ll buy you the subscription in the first place. Thanks, Tiffany!
BTW, the most amazing picture in this issue is that of Debbie Clemens, wife of Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens. She’s in her late 30s (I presume, since he’s turning 41 this year), has four kids, and appears to be in better shape than pretty much all of the featured professional models.
And of course, the funniest thing written about the whole thing is by Gregg Easterbrook, who estimates how much the swimsuits cost on a per-pound basis.
I never minded the whole “looking at the swimsuit issue” or for that matter “looking at the Victoria’s Secret catalog” thing in guys I knew and/or dated. Where I do draw the line, however, is wanting to have five, count them, five copies of the SI swimsuit calendar hanging in the bedroom where the SO and I are sleeping. And yes, that actually happened to me.
I’ve seen SI advertise to women, pitching the magazine as a good gift for the man in your life. If I dated a sports fan, which I never have, I certainly would have considered it.
Geeky aside: Did you know that Marvel comics used to (maybe still does) sell “swimsuit issues”? The regular costumes weren’t skimpy enough to reveal the full majesty of T&A–and this was the company that had a female character running around in a merry widow!