Anybody with more than a couple of brain cells to rub together knows that Sports Illustrated isn't featuring this model to "celebrate a wider understanding of female beauty" or whatever they're branding this as.
It's a fig leaf. Every year they put forth the usual assortment of interchangeable barely dressed, nearly anorexic women. But in recent years in acknowledgment of the inevitable criticisms, they add in a few models that don't fit the mold. A plus-sized model like Ashley Graham or this year's Yumi Nu, or a transgender model who looks just like the usual near-anorexic cisgender women, or Elon Musk's 75 year old super-model mom this year.
They're not interested in creating "a wider understanding of female beauty", they're selling magazines. SI is publishing pages and pages of the usual sort of thing that their customers want, plus a 75 year old model and a plus sized model as a nod to criticism.
MH might buy an SI to look at Yumi Nu, and Shady might buy and SI to look at Elon's mom, but buy and large the people who buy SI swimsuit issue are looking for the kind of content that SI swimsuit issue reliably provides.
IN REGARD TO PETERSON
The "authoritarian tolerance" line is amazing, like the government is waterboarding you if you don't like thicc girls.
Peterson misunderstands SI's intent. Peterson assumes SI is attempting to redefine our culture's notions of beauty. If that were the case, he'd be right. Tastes aren't manufactured. But SI isn't attempting to tell people that overweight women are now
le chic. SI is selling the public the same scrawny models they provide every year.
Peterson is dumb, but it's because he thinks SI is attempting to manufacture a consensus that fat women are hot and fails to recognize that SI is actually just featuring this model as a fig leaf for their usual parade of unrealistically slim women that have continued more or less uninterrupted for decades.
-k