Si Skin Edition Stoops To An All-Time Low

Ladies, dust off the soapbox and polish your prose.

The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is here and that could only mean another year of disgruntled dialogue expressing why it’s so awful SI continues to stoop this low.

Can you believe a mainstream magazine such as SI would put out such trash? This is a class sports publication and what I’m looking at has nothing to do with sports. (But you do continue to look.)

Swimming? Swimsuits? Show me Janet Evans cutting through the water in her Speedo.

Blah, blah, blah, year in and year out, over and over again come the annual cries from the righteous woman executive, the soft-spoken secretary and the high school girls basketball coach who’s been battling gender equity and stereotype issues for decades.

I had always found myself on the outside of the feminist fray. Kathy Ireland seems innocent enough in her Calvin Klein bikini. Naomi Campbell will always wear Norma Kamali well. Even Steffi Graf’s nine-page spread in last year’s issue didn’t tempt me to boycott the WTA Tour.

I wasn’t about to get my 5-year-old pilled florescent pink one-piece in an uproar.

Until now.

This year - the year Heidi Klum straddles the equator - a soapbox isn’t big enough. I’m looking into taking over the stage at the Opera House.

All was going swimmingly as I thumbed through the pages looking at the same-ol’, same-ol’ skin-and-bones models. Until I reached page 132.

It is here where SI begins its 17-page portfolio featuring seven swimsuit-clad wives, who posed with their professional-athlete husbands. A pictorial essay of Barbie following Gidget (see Amy Mickelson), following the mannequin on loan from Nordstrom. It’s a glorious display of hot couples, because hey, the swimsuit issue has men this year. (Denny Neagle dressed in his Atlanta Braves uniform pictured with wife Jennifer in her $295 breast-baring suit. Weak SI, very weak.)

Just a little less than a year after Sports Ill featured former Stanford star and current WNBA Los Angeles Sparks point guard Jamila Wideman on its cover, and one week before giving up the precious glossy to Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt, SI shamed itself.

Could its message be more mixed than Saddam Hussein discussing his nation’s weapons policy?

Go ahead and admire the women athletes whose bodies may not look perfect in their baggy basketball shorts and whose sweaty faces could use a dab of Clearasil. But strive for that $1-million pelvis protruding body, because, you, too, might be able to hook your acrylic nails into a pro athlete.

If the visual messages aren’t enough to fill my plate with rage (better rage than Lean Cuisine), the written word (see “A Tough Post-Nup”) was laughable.

Mrs. Daryl Johnston, Mrs. Herschel Walker, Mrs. Wayne Gretzky, Mrs. Dan Majerle, Mrs. Reggie Miller, Mrs. Denny Neagle and Mrs. Phil Mickelson are the seven wonders of SI. And centerfold girl Janet Jones Gretzky is the Taj Mahal, a white marble masterpiece.

Jones, blonde locks braided in Heidi come-hither style, is dolled up in a red bikini, thigh-high hockey socks, garter belt, hockey skates, gloves and a stick.

The actress-turned-wife of NHL star Gretzky snagged the Great One a decade ago. Life has been grand for the Gretzkys and their three children. At a reported salary of $6.5 million a year as a New York Ranger, making New York City rent isn’t all that stressful.

But the star of “Police Academy 5” is frustrated.

“I love being married to Wayne more than anything,” Jones told SI. “But has it hurt my career? I’d have to say ‘yes.”’

I’d have to say, what career?

The sad saga does not stop with Jones. The survey says all seven wives claim they “have had to sacrifice some measure of their individuality.”

Lean and lanky Diane Johnston, married to the guy on the Dallas Cowboys they call Moose, told SI: “You’re a bed-and-breakfast innkeeper, you’re an entertainer, you’re a counselor and a therapist when the game doesn’t go well. You’re everything, except people can forget what you used to be.”

Is this the part where I’m supposed to pity these women? Nope. This is the part where I say, I’ve had enough.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Hilary Kraus The Spokesman-Review