Swimsuit Issue Makes Waves at School Libraries

Kathy Ishizuka -- School Library Journal, 3/10/2003

What's a school librarian to do when Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit edition arrives in the mail? Some who question its educational value are opting to keep the popular, provocative issue featuring bikini-clad models under wraps.

"It's gotten way too graphic over the last few years, so we won't put it out, " says Sharon Brown, a librarian at Redlands High School, in San Bernardino County, CA. Lynn Reid, librarian at Blue Springs High School in Blue Springs, MO, tucks the swimsuit issue inside a cabinet, rather than display it on a shelf. "It's there, but it's not there," Reid told the Kansas City Star.

Others simply throw the magazine out, including Dianne Abel, library coordinator at Newman High School in Wausau, WI, who doesn't feel models in skimpy swimsuits are appropriate content for a school library. Barbara Jeffus, California state school library consultant, reports that some school officials have marked over swimsuit models' private parts with a pen before allowing the issue into libraries. She says such actions are flirting with censorship.

But for Kathy McIntire, a librarian at Denton High School in Denton, TX, the issue doesn't usually present a problem. That's because most of the time the issue is stolen from the mailroom before it even reaches her desk.

Sports Illustrated reports that its weekly readership of 21 million spikes to 50 million with the release of the swimsuit edition, which has been published as an extra issue of the magazine for 39 years.