A Swimsuit Issue of Men?

By now, if you are around the news at all, even via Yahoo,  you've probably heard about, or at least seen, the cover of  Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue.  Some of you may even have a copy lying on the coffee table at home.  I do not, but the controversy surrounding the latest cover is quite interesting.  One particularly frustrated reaction about the cover came in a CNN article titled: "Why no Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue of Men?"


Interesting question.  Why don't they have a swimsuit issue with guys in swimwear?

The intellectuals out there are so bothered by this!  People with graduate degrees in Gender Studies raise their arms in dismay!

Yet...my grandmother, who never graced the door of a college or maybe even a high school, could tell you the answer.  Men are aroused visually to a degree incomparable to women. 

Yes, women appreciate a good-looking man, but most adult women don't get turned on by seeing the leg of a random dude.  A guy wearing a small bathing suit would be cause for chuckles, not awe. 

As Jesus-followers we have had a long history of granting saint-status to women's mode of attraction.  They are lured by a whole person, a person with a story.  That's why romance novels and romantic comedies are so alluring to them.  They might enjoy a picture of some hot famous man, but not typically by an anonymous one.  They like a specific guy with a story.

Are they better?  Are women better able to reflect God this way?  Are men just more sinful because they get turned on by visual means so easily?

I would suggest that God made both men and women different and both are valid. 

Both sexes have to fight their natures.  Men have to fight their sex drives so that it doesn't harm others and that it is channeled toward an honest, loving relationship (ultimately marriage). 

But women have their fight too against their nature.  Women are prone to be overly emotional, to
think with feelings instead of reason, to manipulate relationships, and to have outbursts (I'm being general of course.  There are always exceptions).  They too have to learn to restrain their bad sides and to channel their emotional energies in healthy ways.

Women are often given a pass and instead, too often, men's sexual designs are vilified.  The author of the CNN article illustrates this when she asks, "If the point (of the SI Swimsuit Edition) is to objectify women, and subvert them in some way, then why isn't there a similar model for men?"

This charge is often leveled at men: they just "objectify" women.  They turn them into sex objects.

I used to make this argument as well.  But what does it mean?  Here is what I think "they" mean: men are turned on by looks, and when they are, they see (read "value") women only as objects for sexual desire and nothing else. 

I would like to stand up and pronounce what most (of course there are bad men, just as there are bad women) men have known for centuries: Men can walk and chew gum at the same time. 

A man can find a woman utterly attractive and alluring, and...(are you ready for this?)...ALSO recognize her as smart, intelligent, professional, capable, competent, even a genius. 

Most grown-up men do not have a problem with this.  God bless the man who marries a woman that he respects as a competent, intelligent person, but also sees her as a delightful source of sexual and relational pleasure.  Isn't this what we all long for? 

I recently heard a man talk about his parents who died a few years ago.  He remarked that his mom kept herself looking sexy (we usually say 'attractive') for her husband until she was 89 years old (In the last year of her life, she was hospitalized and unable to tend to her appearance).  His mom was not subjugating herself or falling into some male scheme of being objectified; she understood how the man she loved was attracted and she strove to bless him, just as in the same way he reached out to the ways she was attracted.  That is what marriage does.  We don't marry a twin.  We marry someone different and we long to meet each other's needs, even when they are different from our own.

In closing, I do want to acknowledge that the SI cover is hyper-sexual and there are moral issues to address as to whether it should grace the cover of such a publication that ends up, in many cases, on the coffee tables of many households for children to behold.  My point in this post was not to address that, but to use it as a springboard to recognize the God-designed differences of male and female sexuality.

Oh, and check out Proverbs 5:18-19.  It shows that the Bible has something to say about this subject too!