We are a sports family. I, personally, am not much of a fan unless I'm watching my kids participate, but the Warden'd watch championship miniature golf and be completely content. We set quite a large budget aside each month to pay to have our kids participate in soccer, basketball, track, cross country, etc. In short, I guess you could say it's a big priority.
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| image credit: flickriver.com |
Each year, the middle school has a magazine drive as a fund raiser. Every year, without fail, I resubscribe to
Sports Illustrated for the Warden. I really only ever read Rick Reilly's column, which now no longer exists, in the back pages; he was always good for a laugh. The kids, though, have come to love reading
Sports Illustrated as well. One year I subscribed to
ESPN Magazine but was so disappointed with all of the alcohol and cigarette ads that I stopped that subscription early. Does that seem a bit ironic to anyone else--a sports magazine in which people who are physically fit show off their athletic prowess and on the facing page...a big ol' package of cigarettes? I'm sorry, I just don't get that, but
Sports Illustrated, who also allow alcohol companies to advertise (although a lot fewer and a lot less in-your-face than
ESPN--this month's has five in a 150-page magazine) has become the coveted thing at our house. The kids start asking if it's arrived starting about Wednesday of each week.
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Every year except the last two, I watch for that fateful day when I find, in my hands as I pull the mail from the mailbox, the swimsuit edition. As I walk straight to the recycling can, I realize how much I miss our wood burning stove. I think, "What a waste!" I spent money for this, but there's no way it's going to enter my house. I really find very little difference between it and
Playboy.
I'm wondering if at some point in the history of
Sports Illustrated, the editor was a former swimmer with a vendetta against some woman who laughed at him in his Speedo. I mean, I can understand Speedos causing some amount of resentment, but what does a woman wearing a very narrow ribbon--not even strategically placed--have to do with sports? Save that kind of stuff for those magazines that they put in those less obvious places in the grocery store.
I would like to assert that akin to cigarettes and alcohol, naked women have nothing to do with sports. Yes,
Sports Illustrated has a
Kids version available too. We subscribed to that for awhile, but what's my husband supposed to do? Hide his magazine under the bed? Lock it in a cupboard?
These past couple years, I've been happy to see that, when subscribing,
S.I. sans swimsuit edition has become an option for people such as me, so I must not be alone in my opinion about this issue, but yesterday, our regular, weekly magazine arrived, and you know what was in there? Yup. An
ADVERTISEMENT for the upcoming
pornography swimsuit issue, and you'd better believe the model wasn't wearing a one-piece. C'mon S.I.! There are children in the house. Have some class!
4 comments:
Wow, I agree on this one. I even hate the commercials during sports on the TV. They too have terrible advertisements. Just yesterday I was so mad over a Carl's JR. commercial. What has all this to do with sports and food?? We should take a stand on these issues.
Blessings and hugs for this one!
Ok I actually understand the reason for having those ads in there... It's all marketing. The people that are watching and reading up on their favorite athletes, are probably in less of a great shape, and are more interested in smoking and drinking and so forth... and actually, plenty of athletes smoke. And to the person that commented above me; people tend to be drinking, eating, smoking, and watching their game, therefore they are advertising to them to try and get them to think about their product instead of the one in your hand and make their burger more appealing than the one in your hand from say mcdonalds or your own bbq... It's simply the people that watch or reads interest. Kids toys commercials are shown during kids shows, and you are bound to get some interesting commercials during the episode of ncis compared to the episode of dr phil...
It is true that the magazines are simply advertizing to their greatest demographic...thus the ads for booze etc. But I do draw the line at the swimsuit issue. It really is nothing more than soft-core porn, and although SI might argue that this too, is simply supplying the customer demand... I wonder at one point, their editors will decide that integrity is more important.
I just wanted to say thank you for your post. I took my kids to get their hair done at a AFB beauty shop last weekend, and while waiting for the last one, my youngest picked up a women's mag I wasn't familiar with, but it was Haute Coutre fashion, and on the back cover was an ad-- for I don't know what-- because it was a couple practically naked with strategic bubbles laughing and having a great time. I grabbed it and flipped it over.
Then she picked up another and opened the front cover and in the table of contents were some thumbnails of later sections, one of which was a topless woman. My son was done, so I grabbed it and put it down and left. Not thinking much about it until your post.
So, the day of your post I called the beauty shop and told them about it, assuming they might not know what was inside. They were appreciative and said they'd pull them. Hopefully they'll flip through them before putting mags out again in a family waiting room.
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