Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue

We had an argument at work about what goes in a magazine's table of contents. Our magazine (for which I'm Managing Editor) has a ToC that only mentions the beginning of sections, without specifically mentioning the start page of each article. I maintained that this was wrong, but a staff member disagreed. Eventually, we agreed that I would go to Barnes & Noble (Yay!) and buy a selection of magazines: Premiere, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated for us to check. It turns out that I was right, but now I'm stuck with a Sports Illustrated Swimssuit Issue. And it doesn't even have a Table of Contents.

I like popular culture, but this is an example of a culture that's more popular than I'm used to. When I say "pop-culture", I'm usually actually talking about goofy little things that the general population wouldn't recognize without a nametag. This is actually my first swimsuit issue, and what better time to make fun of it?

It claims here that the issue's theme is "2001: a Swimsuit Odyssey," which is already a sadly overused catchphrase. It also creates frightening images of swimsuit-clad supermodels being locked out of their spaceships by the onboard computer.

Right. Anyway, here's the high points:

Page 17 - The "got milk?" ad's text shows a woman wearing a towel; the text is "Weak in the knees? Want strong bones? One in five victims of osteoporosis is male. And the calcium in lowfat milk can help prevent it. There, now you really can say you bought the magazine for the articles." Sadly, I bought the magazine for the table of contents. I like how they're not just pushing milk; they're pushing low-fat milk. Because you can't get calcium from whole milk. Or, for that matter, nonfat.

Page 20 - "When it came to ideal forms, Plato agreed with MC Hammer -- 'U can't touch this!'" Oh good. Now I'm being taught basic philosophy by the swimsuit issue. I'm sure this is going to tie in perfectly with the 2001 theme.

Page 30 - The only thing on this page is a camel. Whoo! Sexy! Okay, it's being led by the woman on the right page, who's apparently named "Lujan Fernandez", wearing a $154 swimsuit, a $180 belt (which looks exactly like a piece of braided twine), and a $78 bracelet. No word on how much the blankets on the camel's back cost.

Page 32 - First topless shot. There will be many more, although everything's covered. In fact, given the lengths to which they'll go to cover themselves when theoretically "topless", I think you get more skin when the three square inches of "bikini top" are on than when they're off.

Page 55 - Oh, my mistake. If you're named "Shakara", apparently you don't mind if your $70 sarong is more revealing than Jennifer Lopez's -- actually, you know what? I don't think I'll be able to live with myself if I finish that one. You know where I was going with it. If you really need closure on the joke, I encourage you to do it yourself. It'll make you more self-reliant. Build character. And so on.

Page 60 - In the middle of a big Gladiator-themed article (which is pretty creepy if you've seen this week's Sopranos), the pull-quote reads "A dying gladiator was finished off in the arena by having his skull smashed with a mallet". I'm not sure what the goal of this is; I can understand trying to ride on the popularity of Gladiator, but am I supposed to be thinking of beautiful women in tiny swimsuits, or am I supposed to be thinking of dying men getting their heads crushed? Or am I supposed to be thinking of beautiful women crushing gladiators, because I understand there's websites for that sort of thing? I don't understand why they keep trying to encourage me to think; it seems like that's exactly the wrong behavior for this magazine.

Page 68 - After twelve pages about gladiators, we start the pictorial. It's about Greece. And not, say, Rome. Where the gladiators were. Fume, fume.

Page 98 - Women dressed up as goddesses (mostly Greek, but I'm pretty sure Luna was Roman). Well, dressed up as statues of goddesses. So they're covered in metallic or stone-like paint. In case you were looking for an "objectification of women" moment, this is pretty much as good as you're going to get. Unless there's women dressed up as furniture later on, I guess.

Page 116 - Now we're in Italy. But really, just because they're next to each other in the "Ancient Western Cultures" section of the history book doesn't meen that Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome were the same place. I'm overthinking this; I'm just going to look at the purty wimmin for awhile; I'll catch up with you in a few pages.

I don't know what page this is - They don't put numbers on many of these pages; there's no number within twenty pages of the page I'm looking at. Sorry. Anyway, it's an article about basketball in Bologna (See? Sports!), and it's not bad. There's a lot of extraneous historical information ("the Vatican says that Bologna's province is Italy's most degenerate"; yes, but can I get a travel book's confirmation on that? I got burned on Bangkok's reputation), but if you needed an introduction to Bolognese professional basketball, I guess you could do worse.

Another unnumbered page - Caesar's palace, in Las Vegas. So I guess the theme is really "Ancient Greece and Rome", not "a swimsuit odyssey". Although I guess I could have missed something in the introduction, since I didn't actually read it.

Still no idea - This is starting to be like Flowers For Algernon, where there's clear day delimiters, then it degenerates. Anyway, it's an article about Siegfried and Roy, which ties in with the Veags pictorial but ruins the Greek & Roman theme. Plus, well. You know. Swimsuit issue. Girls in bikinis. And then Siegfried and Roy. If you really need a joke here, you may again feel free to write your own. Hey! Interactivity!

Page 193 - Nothing stunning on this page (although Kim Lemanton and her $600 swimsuit are certainly eye-catching), but this is the first page number in quite some time. It's just possible that I'm not reading this magazine the right way. I'm almost certain that after almost 200 pages, I shouldn't be noticing the page numbers.

Page 214 - Rick Reilly has a column on the back page, and he talks about taking his 14-year-old son to a photo shoot for the magazine. That's just setting up expectations for the kid. He's going to think that life is an endless string of beautiful, nearly-naked women. And while I guess that's true for some people (and I hate them!), the odds are against it. Sorry, kid.