Sports Illustrated’s latest issue on sale has sparked outrage among critics and
public when scantily clad bikini models posed next to locals from China and Africa in traditional garb. The central theme of latest issue was the seven continents, with the models doing photo-shoots in countries like Spain, Chile and Australia.
Critics have regarded the shoot as ‘exotic props.’ One of the images that has sparked the most outrage shows model Anne V, who is Caucasian and blonde, sitting on a traditional raft on a river in Guilin, Guangxi, being piloted by an elderly Chinese man sporting a typical cone hat.
The second image that has been deemed offensive depicts Emily DiDonato
frolicking in a two-piece swimsuit in Namibia with a man wearing a loincloth and other tribal-looking accessories, and carrying a spear.
'China has tons of skyscrapers and modern cities that make New York look rickety, but this image recreates an age-old narrative in which anything non-Western is quaint, backward and impoverished,' Stewart wrote in reference to the China photoshoot.
In her takedown of the Namibia images, the Jezebel writer noted that despite Africa's status as the cradle of civilization and the continent’s impressive diversity, Sports Illustrated chose ‘to tap into the West's past obsession/fetishization with so called savages.'
According to HipHopWired.com, a black model was supposed to be featured in the Africa photoshoot, but a white model was chosen instead, allegedly to provide 'better contrast.'
Dr David Leonard, associate professor in the Department of Critical Culture,
Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University, told Yahoo! Shinethat much like picturesque locales, people of color are seen as exotic and uncivilized 'as a point of comparison for the civilized white beauties.'
Leonard went on to say that beyond their use as human props, the natives in the images are imagined as servants there to please Westerners on their exotic adventure.
Interestingly enough, for the magazine's Antarctica shoot, the blonde beauty Kate Upton posed in a teeny white bikini against the backdrop of penguins.
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