A look at the history of its iconic swimsuit issue (first issued in 1964, the Swimsuit Edition was a major event across the 70s and 80s, at least) offers up both revelation and caution.
- Through 1993, one (usually big name) fashion model would claim the cover each year, with wild speculation as to who it might be leading up to the big reveal.
In 1994, they started going a bit off-script, with three now-iconic models on the cover...
Some signs of desperation emerged in 2016 when they ran three separate issues and three models, but things went off the rails in 2021.
- The traditional "hot women" paradigm was set aside in favor of wokeness, with a couple trans models, a septuagenarian and an octogenarian, and a plus-size model gracing the covers from 2021 through last year.
- Trans-acceptance, age-is-just-a-number, body-positivity, and other culturally progressive values were suddenly prioritized in a publication whose readership is 77% male, and who, lets be frank, buy the swimsuit edition because it's full of gorgeous-hot women...
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