ESPN’s ‘Body Issue’ Cover Pictures
ESPN magazine’s ‘Body Issue’ will hit the newsstands this Friday October 9.
The upcoming issue will offer six different covers featuring naked and barely-clothed athletes. (view 4 cover photos below)
The ‘Body Issue’ will include well-known athletes like Serena Williams, Gina Carano, Adrian Peterson, Dwight Howard and Clair Bevilacqua. It will also feature other lesser-known athletes from a range of sports including hockey, soccer, softball and golf.
From the description given by the magazine’s editors during a “sneak peek,” the issue takes both sports and the bodies that play them seriously. And not just the quintessential “perfect” body.
The skin-friendly issue will also feature 350-pound Mongolian-born sumo star, Byambajav “Byamba” Ulambayar as well as the 112-pound jockey Alex Solis and Olympic weightlifter Cheryl Haworth.
“We were actually looking for something slightly different than what people might have imagined,” editor in chief Gary Belsky said. “We wanted to look at all the different kinds of bodies that can excel at the highest level of athletic competition” and “show how different bodies match with different sports.” He said both the editors and the athletes wanted to keep a sense of humor about the project, and convey a seriousness that would upend some of the expectations — and criticisms.
Belsky said there would be an article on “The Athletic Gene,” for example, in which 100 NFL players contributed DNA to see if there is a genetic marker for athletes, and an essay about “athletes using sex and physicality to sell themselves, and the good and bad of that.”
It seems everybody has body issues.
