I never thought I’d be posting about the Sports Illustrated (SI) swimsuit issue, but it arrived in my mailbox a couple days ago (I’ve been an SI subscriber for more than 20 years and a reader for as long as I can remember) and it brought up a couple things in me that I thought were worth reflecting on.
I, like millions of other young boys and men, remember 1978’s swimsuit issue vividly. It had the (in)famous photo of Cheryl Tiegs with the see-through fishnet swimsuit that I stealthily cut out of my dad’s copy of Sports Illustrated and put in my desk at school. That photo, along with the classic Farrah Fawcett poster confirmed that I was, indeed, heterosexual.
I don’t know if this is normal or not, but, over the years, especially the last few years, the swimsuit issue has held less and less interest for me. I was more excited about the other SI that came the same day that had a cover story about Jeremy Lin than I was about cover-girl Kate Upton.
There are various reasons why it doesn’t do much for me any more. It’s not that I don’t notice attractive women (though, of course, none hold a candle to my wife), but I think the fact that Upton is 19 years old really made me cringe a bit. I’m 44. I should not be leering at a woman who just graduated from high school. Like many other fathers of daughters, the debate about whether things like the swimsuit issue objectify women took a new turn when the nurse said, “It’s a girl!” to my wife and me. That’s the thing that keeps going through my mind. This is someone’s daughter.
I don’t necessarily want to turn this into a finger-wagging post. As I said earlier, I’m not immune to being attracted to women who aren’t my wife (which I know freaks some people out when they hear/read a pastor saying that). I believe when God became flesh it in some ways sanctified our flesh, which I know may horrify some Christians who think that all flesh is vile. But we start creating problems for ourselves when we go from noticing flesh to worshiping it, either our own or another person’s.