thedrifter
01-30-03, 08:08 AM
I really read the articles....................LOL
http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20030129/mdf193839.jpg
National Geographic Reveals Swimsuit Issue
Wed Jan 29, 3:46 PM ET
By Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There are bare breasts, naked bottoms and a cover girl wearing three well-placed shells and a bit of sand, but this is no girlie magazine. It's historical. It's cultural. And it's definitely geographic.
It's National Geographic (news - web sites).
The venerable yellow-bordered magazine, long a repository of gorgeous family-friendly photography, is publishing its first swimsuit issue, on newsstands and online Saturday.
Timed to roughly coincide with the publication of a racy annual look at bathing beauties by Sports Illustrated, the National Geographic issue is meant to offer lighthearted diversion when that seems to be in distinctly short supply.
"We just wanted to have a little fun, especially when it's so cold in the winter," said Bill Allen, National Geographic's editor in chief. "And I think that this country could use a little bit of lightness and fun right now. We've had a pretty tough year and a half in this country."
So as the United States girds for war and weathers a shaky economy, here comes Hanna Hobensack, a fashion design student in Sydney, Australia, who posed for the cover shot in Hawaii wearing three scallop shells and partially submerged in slightly sandy water.
The cover is one of the few pictures specifically shot for the special large-format edition, Allen said. Most are from the magazine's archives, showing how people dressed for swimming over the last 100 years.
"We had looked at all of the pictures that were coming in for this out of the archives, literally tens of thousands ... none of us were really satisfied that it was bringing things up to date," Allen said in a telephone interview, explaining why they sought a new photo for the cover.
'CLOTHING OPTIONAL'
He sent veteran National Geographic photographer Susan Leen to Hawaii "to find something that would really show what the contemporary feeling of bathing suits and the whole enjoyment of fun in a natural setting would be, sort of bring us all the way from our history back in the 1900s to the present."
One of the earliest photographs is from 1900, showing a Red Cross swimming instructor demonstrating strokes while propped up on a stool, wearing the cover-up swimsuit of the day, with only her head and arms uncovered. When wet, such a costume would have weighed about 22 pounds (10 kg), the magazine said.
A pair of bare backsides from Cable Beach's "clothing optional" zone at Broome, Australia, is a more modern archival image, from 1988. Two more posteriors were shown in a 1908 shot of surveyors near a rocky pool along the Canada-Alaska border.
A photo from 1917 showed two bare-breasted women from the Marquesas Islands, "where women dressed simply for the Polynesian weather -- to the dismay of Western missionaries."
This is the sort of partial nudity that made National Geographic a must-read, or at least a must-ogle, for generations of curious adolescents, but Allen said he saw no problem with this image or any other in the collection.
Readers may be surprised that the 112-year-old magazine is making a seeming departure from such sober-sided topics as the outcast Nuba of Sudan and the environmental consequences of global warming (news - web sites) -- two recent articles -- but Allen said a history of swimsuits is in line with National Geographic's mission.
"The whole issue is just a retrospective of how people have dressed to have fun in the water over the last century," he said. "If you look through the magazine, you'll see that there are people in all stages of dress and all kinds of bathing costumes, so it's very much in keeping with the whole cultural history of the world, which is what National Geographic portrays."
Sports Illustrated's Rick McCabe said he had not seen the special issue but graciously observed, "As the pioneers of the swimsuit genre, we welcome National Geographic into the fold."
Sempers,
Roger
http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20030129/mdf193839.jpg
National Geographic Reveals Swimsuit Issue
Wed Jan 29, 3:46 PM ET
By Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There are bare breasts, naked bottoms and a cover girl wearing three well-placed shells and a bit of sand, but this is no girlie magazine. It's historical. It's cultural. And it's definitely geographic.
It's National Geographic (news - web sites).
The venerable yellow-bordered magazine, long a repository of gorgeous family-friendly photography, is publishing its first swimsuit issue, on newsstands and online Saturday.
Timed to roughly coincide with the publication of a racy annual look at bathing beauties by Sports Illustrated, the National Geographic issue is meant to offer lighthearted diversion when that seems to be in distinctly short supply.
"We just wanted to have a little fun, especially when it's so cold in the winter," said Bill Allen, National Geographic's editor in chief. "And I think that this country could use a little bit of lightness and fun right now. We've had a pretty tough year and a half in this country."
So as the United States girds for war and weathers a shaky economy, here comes Hanna Hobensack, a fashion design student in Sydney, Australia, who posed for the cover shot in Hawaii wearing three scallop shells and partially submerged in slightly sandy water.
The cover is one of the few pictures specifically shot for the special large-format edition, Allen said. Most are from the magazine's archives, showing how people dressed for swimming over the last 100 years.
"We had looked at all of the pictures that were coming in for this out of the archives, literally tens of thousands ... none of us were really satisfied that it was bringing things up to date," Allen said in a telephone interview, explaining why they sought a new photo for the cover.
'CLOTHING OPTIONAL'
He sent veteran National Geographic photographer Susan Leen to Hawaii "to find something that would really show what the contemporary feeling of bathing suits and the whole enjoyment of fun in a natural setting would be, sort of bring us all the way from our history back in the 1900s to the present."
One of the earliest photographs is from 1900, showing a Red Cross swimming instructor demonstrating strokes while propped up on a stool, wearing the cover-up swimsuit of the day, with only her head and arms uncovered. When wet, such a costume would have weighed about 22 pounds (10 kg), the magazine said.
A pair of bare backsides from Cable Beach's "clothing optional" zone at Broome, Australia, is a more modern archival image, from 1988. Two more posteriors were shown in a 1908 shot of surveyors near a rocky pool along the Canada-Alaska border.
A photo from 1917 showed two bare-breasted women from the Marquesas Islands, "where women dressed simply for the Polynesian weather -- to the dismay of Western missionaries."
This is the sort of partial nudity that made National Geographic a must-read, or at least a must-ogle, for generations of curious adolescents, but Allen said he saw no problem with this image or any other in the collection.
Readers may be surprised that the 112-year-old magazine is making a seeming departure from such sober-sided topics as the outcast Nuba of Sudan and the environmental consequences of global warming (news - web sites) -- two recent articles -- but Allen said a history of swimsuits is in line with National Geographic's mission.
"The whole issue is just a retrospective of how people have dressed to have fun in the water over the last century," he said. "If you look through the magazine, you'll see that there are people in all stages of dress and all kinds of bathing costumes, so it's very much in keeping with the whole cultural history of the world, which is what National Geographic portrays."
Sports Illustrated's Rick McCabe said he had not seen the special issue but graciously observed, "As the pioneers of the swimsuit genre, we welcome National Geographic into the fold."
Sempers,
Roger