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Dressed down Topless Thompson: empowering or enraging?
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Jack's take, give us yours. And see what other users had to say The woman is a friend of mine but that had no mitigating effect on her anger. "So you finally do a story about a female athlete, and you pose her with her clothes off," she said in a recent phone call. "What is it with you guys?" I tried to answer but she kept interrupting. "Just her top, not all ..." "I had nothing to do with choosing ..." "It's not the first story I've ever written about a wom- ..." . She didn't want to hear it. She hung up. My friend was mad about the opening photo that accompanied my story in the most recent issue of Sports Illustrated (August 14) on swimmer Jenny Thompson, who is competing in the ongoing U.S. Olympic trials in Indianapolis. The story centered on Thompson's failure to qualify for an individual event in the 1996 Games, something she has already rectified for 2000. The photo shows a topless Thompson on a beach wearing form-fitting shorts and red boots. Her hands discreetly cover her breasts. While I would use the word striking to describe the photo -- my friend chose lurid and unnecessary -- it's certainly fair to explore the question of why Thompson has her shirt off to illustrate a story that uses breast only to precede stroke.
Sports Illustrated made no advance plan to shoot Thompson topless. No one at the home office was sure what photographer Heinz Kluetmeier was going to come up with, including Kluetmeier. He and the subject drove to Half Moon Bay, a lovely northern California beach. Thompson brought along what she calls her "Wonder Woman costume," which includes the shorts and booties. She put it on. Thompson's boyfriend was there. There was a hurried feel to the shoot. A policeman stopped by and wrote Kluetmeier a ticket because he had driven Thompson's car onto the beach. The light was fading, it was cold and he had to work fast. At one point Thompson took off her top. Kluetmeier, who has shot many world-class swimmers and many world-class topless women, doesn't even remember how it happened, only that it grew out of the choreography of the shoot. "There was nothing coy about it, no negotiation, no pleading, no advance discussion, nothing like that," said Kluetmeier. "Jenny wanted to do it and I took the shot. Period." Said Thompson Sunday: "I didn't do it to get more attention or be a sex symbol or anything like that. I did it because I like to present an image of strong women, muscular women, for young athletes." Then, too, in my friend's objection is an implicit assumption that is itself sexist, i.e., that a mature, intelligent 27-year-old -- a woman who has won five Olympic gold medals, traveled and competed all around the world and will probably attend medical school at Columbia after Sydney -- would allow herself to be talked into taking off her shirt. This much I know: Wonder Woman doesn't do anything she doesn't want to do. Thompson also offered this pointed remark. "I'd like to see more athletic, muscular women in the magazine instead of just flimsy models." Uh, Jenny, I'll pass it along. Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the
writer.
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