Sports Illustrated: Racist edition

So, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition is out, and all the straight men, bisexuals and lesbians out there have new coffee table décor for at least a solid three months.

I’ve never really understood the rage over the issue. If you want to look at soft-core porn, you can use the Internet, as it’s free and you don’t have to wait a year for it.

Also, there’s something pretty disconcerting about the fact that one of the nation’s most reputable sources for sports information sends a jolly-getter to your mailbox once every year.

My grandpa subscribes to Sports Illustrated — I don’t need that thought in my life.
Regardless, this issue is confusing for different reasons.

This year’s theme is “All Seven Continents,” and they let us know they did all seven continents by throwing a topless Kate Upton on the cover donning a white parka to cover her nipples.

It makes no sense, but at least they got the pun “Polar Bare” out of it.

The seven continents theme goes from odd to awful once the issue starts getting into other locations.

Anne V is photographed in China wearing a bikini bottom and (similar to Upton) covering her nipples only in a “Chinese-looking” silk robe.

Adaora gets fun and flirty on a safari jeep in her photos taken in Namibia.

So we’ve got the basic, “let’s reduce a whole continent to one stereotype” thing going on.

But wait. It’s worse.

Sports Illustrated went so far as to have their models pose with the natives.

In Anne V’s photo shoot, a Chinese man in stale grey garb with few teeth rafts the colorful model across a placid body of water while she stares desirously at the camera.

In Emily DiDonato’s shoot, she’s lucky enough to pose in the African desert with a half-naked, tribal-looking man.

Both she and the man are wearing loincloths and carrying spears.

Normally, I’m a person who tends to call for people to be a little more tolerant about white people being devils.

I think we should all take less offense and laugh more.

I own a bunch of “native print” clothing, and I’m not ashamed to wear it.

But I’m also not wearing it with a headdress next to a Native American with a dead buffalo next to him.

That’s essentially what Sports Illustrated has done.

Most of the outrage from the images comes from the fact that real people are being used as mere props in this fashion shoot.

David Leonard, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, hit the nail on the head when he told Yahoo, “these photos depict people of color as exotic backdrops.”

It’s not the fact that the magazine sought out an exotic location to use as the backdrop for the shoot.

It’s that a white pouty model is juxtaposed with a nearly toothless Chinese man all in the name of boobs and butt.

I’m all for lightening up and having a great-looking photo in the name of fashion, but we don’t need this.

Sports Illustrated has gone too far.

­— sjostrow@indiana.edu