SI swimsuit issue also has entertaining, important ads

In his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri describes his descent into the underworld where he visits the three realms of the dead— the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. With the Latin poet Virgil as his guide, Dante passes through the nine circles of hell and the seven terraces of Purgatory, where each terrace corresponds to one of the seven deadly sins. Finally, guided by the lovely Beatrice, Dante tours the nine spheres of Heaven, ending up face-to-face with God, who offers Dante an understanding of both the Divine and human nature.

The parallels were uncanny if not downright eerie this past week, when, like Dante descending into the underworld, I descended into the dark and turgid pages of the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue in the hope of gleaning a better understanding of the Divine, human nature or at least what’s today’s hot look in swimsuit wear.

And just as Dante was guided by Beatrice, I had my own Beatrice, although it was Brazilian swimsuit model Ana Beatriz Barros, who welcomed me to the magazine from the Table of Contents page with a come-hither look and half a swimsuit by Tamara Catz.

Dante may have been seeking enlightenment and wisdom, but I was in search of information about what lies at the heart of our American consumer society circa 2005, a question that I believe is most accurately reflected in only two sources: TV commercials during the Super Bowl and the advertising in the SI Swimsuit issue.

As always, the extensive time I spent pouring over the swimsuit issue was productive, and I learned many new and important things.

For example, I found out that it is possible to pay up to $800 for a swimsuit that includes less material than your average pair of socks. I also learned that the tops to women’s swimsuits are evidently very difficult to keep on. Five of the first six models had managed to lose their tops entirely, and several others were clinging to their tops to keep them from coming off. You’d think that a society that can produce an iPod and light beer could produce a swimsuit top that stayed on.

This year’s issue included 74 photographs of women in swimsuits. It also included five photographs of women wearing no swimsuit whatsoever, but instead wearing only body paint. As an added wrinkle from previous years (no pun intended), this year, instead of painted-on swimsuits, the models wore painted-on sports jerseys, thereby taking the concept of product placement to a new and exciting level.

One model wore nothing but some strategically placed snow as if we weren’t all already longing for warmer weather. There were four photographs that included elephants, for reasons that I won’t even begin to speculate on, and three photos that included men in swimsuits, suggesting, I suppose, that men are less photogenic than elephants.

If we assume that the advertising in the swimsuit issue accurately reflects the purchasing priorities of SI’s targeted demographic, which appears to be adolescent males ages 12 to 50, then alcoholic beverages are the most popular product with that group. There were 11 ads for such beverages, including ads for two kinds of vodka but only one brand of beer. Clothing is next-most important to this market segment with 10 ads, the most notable being for Wolverine boots that featured a model who was not only not wearing boots, but was only wearing half her swimsuit.

Automotive products garnered eight ads, including, big surprise, ads for Humvees, Harleys and an SUV with a 355 horsepower engine. Men’s grooming products scored seven ads, mostly from the cologne family, but none for my personal favorite after-shave products– Hai Karate and Bengay. There were four ads for movies and DVDs and four more for SI Swimsuit spin-off products, three ads for medical and health products, including Cialis and something called Nitroxy 3, which was said to be a “nitric oxide stimulator,” which is a good thing, right?

ESPN had two ads. There were two ads for cigarettes (Kool and Camel), two for sports equipment (sunglasses and golf clubs), two for fast food (McDonald’s and Wendy’s), two for travel (Las Vegas and Tahiti, both of which places evidently feature lots of attractive people standing around in swimsuits), two ads for stereo equipment and two for web search engines. There was a single ad for gum, one for Best Buy and one for Verizon. Bringing up the rear, and giving every indication of being in the wrong magazine, were single ads for Planter’s Peanuts and an electric nail gun.

I’m already looking forward to next year.

Tom Tyner writes a weekly humor column for this newspaper. This is from his “Classics File” written years ago.