Did Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue go too low with Hannah Davis’s bikini bottom?

By Marissa Payne February 5

Hannah Davis isn’t naked on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s annual Swimsuit Issue, but she almost is. The 24-year-old model and girlfriend of retired New York Yankee Derek Jeter is pictured tugging seductively at her bikini bottom, which is slung so low that a centimeter more would make the shot more suitable for Playboy.

The shot has caused several people to question whether Sports Illustrated has, um, dipped a little too low by giving Davis’s pelvis prime real estate on the the annual issue’s cover.

“Will we all be desensitized when SI debuts a swimsuit issue with a bottomless model? Seems like we’re gettin there,” People magazine senior writer Lynette Rice said on Twitter.

Bustle.com’s Amy Sciarreto also asks if the shot goes “too far.”

“I can’t decide if I think it’s vulgar. She is pulling at her bottoms and her lower lady parts are barely covered up. There’s no question about whether or not she gets a Brazilian wax, which means that very little is left to the imagination,” Sciarreto writes, calling Davis “inarguably a babe.” She adds: “I’ve often said that sheer sexiness is about what you can’t see, not about what you can see. In this case, you can almost see too much.”

US Weekly is conducting a poll on the subject, asking if the shot is “too sexy.” While the online poll that asks readers to choose between the embarrassingly choices of “So hot!” and “Ugh, porn!” is certainly not scientific, 78 percent of the more than 2,000 people who voted so far chose the latter.

But is this really anything new?

Sports Illustrated went super low with its bikini bottoms in 2012 when model Kate Upton, girlfriend of Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander, wore bottoms so low they were barely there to begin with. If she tugged at them, they would’ve disintegrated.

Us Weekly conducted a similar poll over the supermodel’s shot then, too, asking readers if it was “So sexy!” or “So skanky!” Seventy-six percent of the more than 20,000 respondents responded with the latter.

The lesson here: Sports Illustrated isn’t doing anything they haven’t done before, except maybe inexplicably sending Davis to a farm to take her “too sexy” photo opposed to a beach, you know, where one might actually want to wear a bikini.

Marissa Payne writes for The Early Lead, a fast-breaking sports blog, where she focuses on what she calls the “cultural anthropological” side of sports, aka “mostly the fun stuff.” She is also an avid WWE fan.