Serena Williams, other athletes go nude for ESPN
If you thought Serena Williams exposed herself with her tirade at the U.S. Open, you haven’t (literally) seen anything yet.
Williams will grace one of the six different covers for ESPN magazine’s first annual “Body Issue.” Other cover models include Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings and Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic, Gina Carano of mixed martial arts fame, Carl Edwards (NASCAR), and Sarah Reinertsen, an ironman triathlete who happens to also be an amputee.
If you’re wondering what’s underneath the cover, the Body Issue features over 80 athletes, including Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones, surfers Laird Hamilton and Claire Bevilacqua, Jessica Mendoza of the U.S. Women’s National Softball Team, golfer (okay, golfer with mega-watt personality) Christina Kim, James Blake (tennis), and boxing’s Manny Pacquiao.
If this is really an attempt to compete with Sport’s Illustrated’s swimsuit issue (and I’m not sure that it is), someone over at ESPN is scary smart. Celebrating the human body tastefully, and to some extent celebrating the human spirit, is much more interesting to me than a bunch of women modeling bikinis. So take that, SI.
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I slogged through an entire, horrible “E:60″ instead of solely focusing on the Twins/Tigers just for some shots from this issue. Then I renewed my subscription to ESPN the magazine.
So … whether the intention was to make this like the Swimsuit Issue, the effect (making 18 – 40 year olds buy year long subscriptions for one issue) was absolutely the same. I’ve got to think that was intentional. I can’t believe ESPN thought it’s readers independently cared about women’s surfing.
There’s definitely overlap between this issue and SI’s. I was thinking that there will be a fair number of people in ESPN’s version that I would not expect to see in SI.
Wait, you watched all of E:60?
In response to another comment. See in context »Elie: Unless I’m missing something, I thought the unspoken intent of EVERY issue is to sell, right? I don’t think the next ESPN mag will be an active attempt to get all those 18-40 year olds to return their subscriptions.
Look, skin is the nature of the biz and mass media at large. We’d be naive to believe otherwise. I initially the “Skin Issue” was another ESPN blitz for self-promotion. But if these photos, as the Worldwide Leader claims, are tastefully done and not doctored, I applaud (*gripping PC tightly waiting for lightning to strike*) ESPN’s action here.
We, as a society, are overexposed to plastic body images. And there are thousands of avenues to see said body images. But if a national magazine is tastefully portraying the human body as the result of hard work and exercise, I can’t find a fault. Better we uphold these ideals than starving models, especially in an era of rampant obesity.