'Dirty baker's dozen': 13 companies facilitating sexual exploitation

By Samuel Smith, Deputy Managing Editor Friday, February 07, 2020

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 

Since 1964, the popular magazine Sports Illustrated has released a “swimsuit issue” featuring top female athletes posing in scantily clad bikinis. 

NCOSE believes that the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated sexually objectifies women for “sport and for profit.” 

“The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue would be more aptly named the Sexploitation Issue,” the Dirty Dozen List reads. “Women of all shapes, sizes, and ages deserve more than being reduced to body parts for men to ogle. This magazine is sending a message that women’s bodies are for public consumption, and any retailer that displays and sells it is condoning the toxic culture of entitlement to the female body.”

NCOSE argues that the images in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue are “not designed to be empowering” but rather to portray women as “sexually desirable and available to the male customers.” 

After years of activism, NCOSE said that the pharmacy chain CVS has removed the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue from its shelves. NCOSE is pressuring Target, Walgreens and Kroger to do the same.