ESPN versus Sports Illustrated:Everybody loses

I like sports.

I enjoy reading Sports Illustrated .

But I do not subscribe to the magazine.

Why?

One simple reason: their Swimsuit Edition. Or rather, their lack of Swimsuits Edition.

I still haven't figured out how women wearing the suggestion of beachwear constitutes a sport of any kind, but that is beside the point.

As a writer and speaker who addresses the problem of pornography, I object to SI's Swimsuit Edition. I often highlight it as a boy's easy opportunity to get tripped up by a glimpse of scantily clad women. Boys don't have to go looking for SI--it's waiting for them in the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target--pick a store, any store!

Looks like ESPN The Magazine is considering competing with SI's Swimsuit Edition. ESPN is thinking about publishing a "Body Issue" that features male and female athletes with no clothes on, according to a report here.

Here's a quote from the magazine's editor-in-chief Gary Belsky:

"We're toying with the idea of making it a no-clothes issue," Belsky says from his office in Manhattan. But first, he says, he and his staff will have to figure out how to "use equipment and pads and bats and goalposts and soccer nets and pucks and helmets to obscure body parts that we still can't quite go to in a magazine that's part of a company owned by (Disney)."

I found out about the possible ESPN no-clothes issue because my friend, Scoti, e-mailed me an open letter posted posted to the magazine. Read it here.
You'll be glad you did.