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One of the top Yahoo stories today addresses the controversey over this Sports Illistrated cover. Sports Illistrated has had very few women on it’s cover, except for their softcore porn swimsuit editions, which are totally unrelated to the magazines sports theme. In support of this cover, the yahoo article states that the picture is nearly identical to a previous cover featuring a male skier, which wasn’t objected to, and that people didn’t have a problem with a male athelete posing shirtless for the cover of GQ. I don’t find either of these points persausive. I looked at the cover the the past male skier, and had a hard time seeing it in anyway provacative or sexy, nor does it appear it was intended to be. And, GQ almost always contains covers or photos of nude/semi-nude men or women that are racy.
I think people are missing the point. Female atheltes want to be taken seriously and respected for their talent and hard work like male atheletes are. Although the provacative nature of the photo may be somewhat subtle, if men see the Lindsey Vonn cover and the first thought that comes to mind is something perverted, she is not being treated with the same level of importance or respect that similiarly talented men recieve from the magazine, and that it a problem. What do you think?
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Let-the-Lindsey-hype-begin-Vonn-is-Sports-Illus;_ylt=ArExHMvaPyD6tvCIddTEWe9otLV_?urn=oly,217525
Also See http://mankinirevolution.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/lindsey-vonn-p…imsuit-edition/
For further discussion on this topic, go to #mce_temp_url#.
