When I was young, I looked forward to the Sports Illustrated bathing suit issue so that I could see gorgeous women way out of my league having fun in minimal clothing.
In real life, intimacy is often frightening and I am not always down for it. In real life, seeing women I knew well exposed in a bathing suit was often disturbing, but when the photography was handled by a pro, I didn’t have to fear the pictures. They were only going to bring me pleasure but not such an intensity of pleasure that I’d lose my mind.
The bathing suit issue did not have an addictive effect on me and I didn’t hate myself afterward. It was just the right amount of sexy.
The last few years, however, Sports Illustrated has chosen to focus on what less enlightened men than myself might describe as freaks and gimps and losers. Why? Why did the magazine mess with its sacred formula? Why did the magazine develop such contempt and hatred for its readers?
The devolution of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue from a mainstream cultural staple to its current form illustrates a shift in how elite alliances use media to signal moral status and enforce a new “sacred center.” This is not a profane failure of business logic, but a successful exercise in symbolic boundary maintenance.
The Shift from the Profane to the Sacred (Jeffrey Alexander)
Jeffrey Alexander’s cultural sociology explains that institutions maintain power by aligning themselves with “sacred” values. In the 20th century, the Swimsuit Issue operated in the profane realm of male-oriented entertainment and “just politics.” It relied on a binary of physical attractiveness that was widely accepted but lacked a “higher” moralizing narrative.
In the 2020s, the magazine’s leadership triggered a generalization of consciousness. They moved the issue into the realm of the sacred by framing it as a tool for “inclusivity,” “body positivity,” and the dismantling of “oppressive beauty standards.” The traditional “attractive young woman” was reclassified as a symbol of an “impure” past. By featuring models that violate traditional aesthetics, the magazine performs a ritual of purification. The goal is no longer to sell magazines to a profane audience, but to demonstrate that the publication is aligned with the new sacred center of elite cultural values.
Alliance Theory and the Status Signaling (David Pinsof)
David Pinsof’s alliance theory suggests that shared beliefs—especially those that seem “bullshit” or counter-intuitive—act as focal points for elite coordination. For the editorial and corporate elite, the “mess” is the point.
By intentionally selecting covers that alienate the legacy audience, the editors signal their defensive alliance with the broader liberal-professional elite. This is a high-cost signal: it says, “I am so committed to the current elite moral consensus that I am willing to burn my own brand’s profane profitability to prove it.” This synchronizes the magazine with the “HR-ification” of society, ensuring its editors remain in good standing with the “legal cartel” and the cultural managers who control status in 2026 America.
Expertise and the Authoritative Closure (Stephen Turner)
Stephen Turner’s analysis of expertise explains how a specialized class uses its “liberal property” to bypass the profane desires of the public. The editors and “diversity consultants” who now curate the Swimsuit Issue act as the high priests of the new aesthetic order.
They have established an authoritative closure where beauty is no longer defined by the profane “gaze” of the reader, but by the expert-led criteria of “social impact” and “representation.” Any reader who objects is framed as lacking the necessary “intellectual property” to understand the sophisticated moral work being done. This expertise creates a closure that silences the original audience, as the magazine’s legitimacy is now derived from expert consensus rather than consumer satisfaction.
The “Everything is Bullshit” Framework (David Pinsof)
Finally, the “everything is bullshit” framework reveals the adaptive deception at the heart of the transformation. The narrative that the magazine is “empowering women” is the “bullshit” required to maintain the reputation of the elite alliance.
In reality, the devolution is a strategic move to pivot the brand away from a dying print-ad model toward a high-status “impact” model that attracts ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investment and elite institutional support. The “mess” is not a mistake; it is a calculated effort to trade a profane, low-status audience for a sacred, high-status alliance. The concrete interest of the editors is not the “empowerment” of the models, but the preservation of their own status within an elite social geometry that views traditional male-oriented media as “impure.”
ChatGPT says: 1. Alliance Theory. The Swimsuit Issue stopped serving its original coalition
Originally, the Swimsuit Issue did one simple thing.
It rewarded:
• male attention
• heterosexual desire
• aspirational beauty
• commercial advertising logic
That coalition included readers, advertisers, models, photographers, and editors aligned around pleasure and profit.
Then the coalition changed.
Media elites, HR departments, cultural gatekeepers, and advertisers became risk-averse and status-conscious. The Swimsuit Issue was no longer allowed to exist as a low-stakes indulgence. It had to signal moral alignment with elite norms around identity, inclusion, and virtue.
Alliance Theory rule:
When a product’s audience and its status arbiters diverge, the arbiters win.
The Swimsuit Issue stopped being for readers and started being for other elites.
2. Alexander. A profane object was forcibly sacralized
The Swimsuit Issue was originally profane in the Durkheimian sense.
It was not about truth.
Not about justice.
Not about virtue.
It was about bodies, sun, sex appeal, and fantasy.
The crisis begins when elites reframe it as morally dangerous.
Beauty becomes exclusion.
Desire becomes harm.
Selection becomes oppression.
The issue is reclassified from:
“harmless indulgence”
to
“site of moral violation”
Once sacralized, the ritual logic flips.
The issue must now perform purification.
It must atone.
It must demonstrate values.
So the magazine replaces erotic coherence with symbolic diversity displays. The shoot becomes a morality play.
Alexander’s model predicts the result.
The ritual becomes joyless, didactic, and incoherent because it is no longer allowed to be what it is.
3. Pinsof. Why everyone involved pretends this is an upgrade
No one involved actually believes the modern Swimsuit Issue is more appealing.
But affirming it signals:
• elite moral sophistication
• immunity from accusation
• alignment with progressive norms
Disliking it signals:
• low status taste
• moral backwardness
• sexual unsophistication
So people lie.
They praise what they privately find embarrassing.
They call it “brave.”
They call it “important.”
They call it “conversation-starting.”
Pinsof’s logic applies perfectly.
When belief is costly and dissent is punished, affirmation becomes ritual, not judgment.
That is why the issue survives as a brand exercise even as it collapses as a product.
4. Turner. Expertise replaces desire
The fatal move was allowing experts to reinterpret attraction.
Editors began deferring to:
• sociologists
• consultants
• DEI frameworks
• body-positivity discourse
These experts are not trained in desire.
They are trained in norm enforcement.
Turner’s insight applies cleanly.
When experts claim authority over domains that were previously governed by taste, intuition, and market feedback, legitimacy collapses.
Sexual attraction does not obey memos.
Beauty does not submit to policy.
Desire does not care about inclusion statements.
So the product becomes unintelligible.
It neither arouses nor persuades.
It only signals.
Why this feels like a “mess”
Because the Swimsuit Issue now has contradictory obligations.
It must:
• avoid offending
• affirm inclusion
• deny hierarchy
• sell fantasy
Those goals cannot coexist.
The original product required exclusion.
It required hierarchy.
It required unapologetic selection.
Once those were morally prohibited, the product hollowed out.
The deeper pattern
This is not unique to Sports Illustrated.
Any elite capture of a pleasure-oriented institution follows the same arc.
First.
Tolerance with moral footnotes.
Then.
Reframing as harm.
Then.
Mandatory virtue signaling.
Finally.
Audience abandonment and elite self-congratulation.
Bottom line
The Swimsuit Issue did not evolve.
It was sacrificed.
Alliance Theory explains who took control.
Alexander explains why it became moralized.
Pinsof explains why praise replaced honesty.
Turner explains why it became expert-managed nonsense.
It failed because it was no longer allowed to exist for the people who actually liked it.
And once desire is treated as a moral problem, the product is already dead.
Gemini says: The contrast between the recent trajectory of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and the Netflix series America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders reveals a fundamental split in how modern elite alliances manage cultural legacy. While Sports Illustrated has pursued a strategy of “purification” by dismantling its original aesthetic, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC) have maintained their “sacred center” by doubling down on extreme standards, legitimized through a new form of professionalized expertise.
1. The Sacred vs. The Profane (Jeffrey Alexander)
Jeffrey Alexander’s cultural sociology explains that institutions survive by successfully labeling themselves as “pure” and their rivals as “impure.”
Sports Illustrated’s Disruption: The magazine has moved from the profane world of male entertainment to a sacred realm of “social justice.” It attempts to cleanse its “impure” past by featuring models that explicitly violate traditional beauty standards. This is a ritual of purification meant to signal that the brand is now aligned with the sacred center of elite “inclusivity”.
DCC’s Continuity: The DCC has maintained the same “sacred” aesthetic for decades. They frame the “uniform” and the “pom-poms” as redolent symbols of a timeless American myth. Unlike SI, they have not moved the “profane” reality of physical beauty into a new moral category; they have instead sacralized the labor and discipline required to achieve that beauty.
2. Alliance Theory and Coordination (David Pinsof)
Alliance Theory suggests that belief systems are tools for elite synchronization.
SI and the Professional Elite: The devolution of the Swimsuit Issue is a focal point for the liberal-professional alliance. By signaling that “beauty is a social construct,” the editors synchronize with the HR-led management class. They are willing to sacrifice profane profitability for a high-status defensive alliance with other elite institutions.
DCC and the Institutional Elite: The Dallas Cowboys organization maintains a different alliance geometry. They synchronize with the “sacred center” of American patriotism and the NFL’s massive commercial power. Their “bullshit” (in Pinsof’s terms) is the narrative that being a DCC is a “sisterhood” rather than a low-wage labor contract. This narrative allows the elite alliance (the Jones family, the NFL) to maintain a highly profitable status quo while appearing to celebrate “women’s empowerment” through excellence.
3. Expertise and Authoritative Closure (Stephen Turner)
Stephen Turner’s analysis of expertise explains how a specialized class creates “liberal property” to bypass democratic or consumer desires.
SI’s Expert Shield: The magazine relies on “diversity consultants” and social justice experts to provide authoritative closure. They define what is “moral” in a way that makes profane consumer complaints look “uninformed” or “impure”.
DCC’s Professionalized Expertise: The Netflix series highlights a different kind of expert: the choreographer and the “Director of Cheerleading.” These experts create a closure of the field based on meritocratic standards. By focusing on “kick-line height” and “technical precision,” they frame their extreme physical requirements as a neutral, professional standard (“liberal property”) rather than a subjective preference. This expertise makes the “exclusion” of certain bodies look like a technical necessity rather than a moral violation.
4. The “Everything is Bullshit” Framework (David Pinsof)
Pinsof’s framework reveals that both trajectories are adaptive deceptions designed to protect reputations in a moralized environment.
The SI Deception: The “inclusivity” narrative masks the reality of a dying print brand trying to find relevance in a high-status ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) environment. The “mess” is a strategic pivot to attract institutional support when profane reader interest has vanished.
The DCC Deception: The “America’s Sweetheart” narrative masks the concrete interests of a billion-dollar sports franchise that benefits from the unpaid or low-paid labor of high-status women. The Netflix series is a ritual renewal; it uses “liminal” storytelling to make the audience feel the “pure” struggle of the dancers, thereby concealing the profane economic exploitation that underpins the entire system.
Ultimately, Sports Illustrated is a case of an institution that has abandoned its original alliance to join a new, “sacred” one, while the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have successfully updated their “bullshit” to make a 1970s aesthetic survive in 2026. One purifies by destroying its past; the other purifies by professionalizing it.
ChatGPT says: Both stories are about sexuality, status, and institutional legitimacy, but they diverge on one crucial axis.
The Swimsuit Issue tried to survive by becoming a moral statement and it lost its product identity. The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders project survived by re-framing the same underlying reality as labor, craft, and sacrifice without pretending the sex appeal is not the point.
Alliance Theory. Two different coalitions seized control
Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue drifted from a reader advertiser coalition to an elite gatekeeper coalition. The gatekeepers were not trying to make something desirable. They were trying to make something safe. The issue became a credential for moral alignment. It increasingly spoke to other elites rather than to the audience that originally bought it.
The Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders franchise is still governed by a coalition that includes the team brand, the league’s entertainment logic, sponsors, and a mass audience that wants a specific kind of Americana. Netflix can critique, humanize, and contextualize, but it is operating inside a stable coalition that will not surrender the core product. The cheerleaders remain the cheerleaders.
Alexander. What got sacralized and what stayed profane
SI sacralized the swimsuit issue itself. It treated a fundamentally profane pleasure object as if it had to answer to sacred values. Once you do that, you invite purity tests and you destroy the reason the thing existed.
Netflix sacralizes the women’s effort, not the spectacle. The show turns the backstage process into a moral narrative about discipline, ambition, bodily cost, and organizational power. The on-field performance stays profane entertainment, while the human story behind it is what gets moral weight.
That split is why the Netflix framing feels coherent. It brackets the part that is basically fantasy and instead moralizes the part that is actually morally legible. Work, risk, vulnerability, hierarchy, sacrifice.
Pinsof. Signaling versus candor
SI became a signaling engine. It asked the audience to applaud the publication’s virtue more than to enjoy the imagery. It trained people to read it as a moral document. That shifts attention from the models to the editor’s righteousness. The reader becomes a juror. Desire becomes suspect.
The Netflix series signals something different. It signals sophistication through ambivalence. You are allowed to say the routine is glamorous and also say the labor arrangement is brutal. You can admire the women and question the institution. That is a higher-status signal today than either puritan condemnation or adolescent drooling. It lets elite viewers participate without feeling vulgar.
Turner. Expertise and the management of legitimacy
SI’s modern version looks like it was designed by committees. When expert frameworks take over a product whose success depends on instinctive taste, the result is incoherence. The expertise is about avoiding moral risk, not about creating a compelling artifact.
Netflix uses expert modes in a way that fits the medium. Documentary grammar is built for contextualization. It can bring in coaches, audition footage, injury narratives, pay discussions, and institutional history. Expertise here does not replace desire. It explains the machine that produces the spectacle. That makes the viewer feel informed rather than managed.
Where they converge
Both are attempts to handle the same modern tension. A lot of people still enjoy sexualized spectacle. Elites want to treat overt heterosexual male desire as low status or dangerous. So institutions must either deny what they are or reframe it.
SI tried denial and moral redefinition. It weakened the product.
The Cowboys cheerleaders model, as refracted through Netflix, chooses reframing without denial. It keeps the spectacle and shifts the moral spotlight to labor, hierarchy, and human cost.
That is why one feels like a mess and the other can feel thoughtful without being a lie.
