Why Is This Photo Deeply Offensive?

[Warren DeMontague]

94. I wish I was.

There was a full month-long freakout over the thing.

A now-deceased DU member I was friends with posted a thread about it, exactly as someone had posted a thread about the swimsuit issue in previous years.. for some reason, though, her posting the cover that year set a few people off to a ridiculous degree.

I'm still not sure why- it was the year the cover image consisted of 3 women standing and smiling on a beach; I would find and post the picture, but, even though it's way less explicit than the picture in the OP, here, I'm pretty sure someone would hit the alert button the second it went up..



so, fuck it.

but it was one of those situations where the meltdown it generated became self-sustaining, so for weeks people were arguing about the argument about the argument about the stupid SI Swimsuit cover.

And the hyperbole around the thing just kept getting ratcheted up, like I said. The first thread was bad enough, but the subsequent threads just got more and more insane. Somewhere along the line of calling it a 'disgusting human rights atrocity' I'm fairly certain someone drew an equivalence between the thing and the killing fields, someone else claimed that seeing the "horrific" image of the 3 women smiling on the beach "ruined my entire month", that sort of thing.

Then of course there were the people who claimed that there's no difference between a culture that forces women to wear burqas and one that allows women to wear bikinis...





...I dunno. It was one of many milestones on my road to just not taking this place nearly as seriously as I once did.