Skimpy Coverage

Skimpy Coverage explores Sports Illustrateds treatment of female athletes since the iconic magazines founding in 1954. The first book-length study of its kind, this accessible account charts the ways in which Sports Illustratedarguably the leading sports publication in postwar Americaengaged with the social and cultural changes affecting womens athletics and the conversations about gender and identity they spawned. Bonnie Hagerman examines the emergence of the magazines archetypal female athletegood-looking, straight, and whiteand argues that such qualities were the same ones the magazine prized in the women who appeared in its wildly successful Swimsuit Issue. As Hagerman shows, the female athlete and the swimsuit model, at least for the magazine, were essentially one and the same. Despite this conflation, and the challenges it poses, Hagerman also tracks the distance that sportswomenincluding Wilma Rudolph, Billie Jean King, Serena Williams, and Megan Rapinoehave traveled both within Sports Illustrateds pages and without. Blending sports with gender history, Skimpy Coverage profiles numerous sportswomen who have used athletics and the platform sport offers to push for empowerment, freedom, equality, and acceptance in ways that have complemented and inspired broader feminist agendas.