Did Wokeness Kill Sports Illustrated?
No. But like giving lead to someone with lead poisoning, it probably didn't help.
Mass layoffs at Sports Illustrated (SI) have created the latest game of “Wuz it woke or wuz it not?” This round was kicked off by psychologist Jordan Peterson who appeared to suggest SI’s decline was due to their including a plus sized model in the 2022 swimsuit edition (SE). That the SE photo included the slogan “Be the change you want to see” admittedly has some irony given SI’s nosedive into the ground. But Peterson’s comment touched off the usual internet back and forth whether either woke trends are entirely responsible for the death of SI or have nothing at all to do it. The truth, of course, is more complex.
First some throat clearing. I have no interest in shaming or bullying Yumi Nu, the model in question. Many comments about her online have been gross and cruel. We should be kind to everyone, beauty is (somewhat) subjective, and being mean is without value. I hope Nu’s career is highly successful. That said, it’s also delusional to suggest that there isn’t a kind of median beauty standard for both men and women. Let me say upfront, as an early 50’s, 5’6” dude, I have no illusion I’ll be in the “Hot Professors of Academia” calendar anytime soon. And that’s fine. And, though beauty standards can vary across cultures, mainly influenced by food availability, most American men, the SE’s main audience, prefer young, athletic women, not plus sized women. And SI had to have known that, so it’s hard to imagine what their strategy was with featuring Nu.
In this sense, SI’s decisions feel a bit like the Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney controversy, where SI simply failed to understand their core audience and drove them away (or pushed them out the door since they were already leaving). Again, if your core audience enjoys plus sized models, then Nu is an awesome choice. But if SE built a core audience on trim, athletic models, then suddenly switched because…I dunno, wokeness, being on the “right side of history”, too many gender studies classes, whatever…it’s a bad plan.
None of this is to say SI’s problems are entirely because of bad decisions in the SE. SI had been declining for years. As with many newspapers and magazines, much of this is driven by the internet and the wide availability of free content. After all, why pay to look at pretty women in swimsuits when you can find that for free on the internet?
Some people noted that magazine sales have generally been slumping for years, albeit with some improvement in 2021. That’s certainly true, and points toward the likelihood of free internet content and reduced advertising revenue being a problem across the board. Yet, concerns about insipid wokeness aren’t just limited to SI, and many people have suggested that obsession with woke views of oppression, race, identity, etc., have spread like a virus through many mainstream publications. Political scientist Zach Goldberg has been documenting this issue for years in newspapers. So, showing that SI is demonstrating a similar downward trend as many other magazines and newspapers doesn’t mean wokeness isn’t a part of the problem, even if it’s not the entire problem. SI is just one chicken in an increasingly obnoxious henhouse.
It's less clear whether the decline for newspapers and magazines is specific to left-leaning products. It appears to be true for a wide range of left-leaning outlets, from the Washington Post to Time, to CNN, though the New York Times is an exception, probably sopping up what remains of this audience from its competitors. But, alternatively, the center to center-right Wall Street Journal has seen an increase in subscriptions, particularly digital. Fox News has been killing it for years on television. These are just anecdotes, however, and I’d love to see a sophisticated analysis of whether politics predicts subscription decline.
As I’ve mentioned before, wokeness in art appears to be something of a negative amplifier. A really good piece of art or magazine can survive a few clumsy attempts at moral grandstanding. But for most outlets, its going to work against them to one degree or another. In that sense we can think of SI’s strategy as a kind of kamikaze approach. Already struggling, it featured a SE that went against what its core demographic enjoys. This would have made things worse for them not better. Perhaps the analogy to imagine is being in a rowboat that is taking on water. Pulling out one’s pistol and firing a few rounds into the bottom of the boat isn’t the thing that made it start sinking, but it definitely didn’t help. Woke virtue signaling for mainstream outlets, whether SI, the Washington Post or, indeed, Bud Light is probably a lot like that.
Of course, if an outlet’s core audience are highly progressive critical social justice enthusiasts, then wokeness is a sensible part of the business model. But for most mainstream outlets it’s probably best avoided. My guess is that many companies are having difficulty separating signal from noise and fail to recognize that the loudest people online don’t necessarily provide good data for how their products should evolve.