Exquisite Pairs

A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until -- “My God,” says a second man, “I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn.” At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are, the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience... “Look, look!” recites the crowd. “A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer.”

@juliephenderson tweeted this photo a few weeks ago of her and Irina Shayk:Perhaps this means there will be a nice twosome photo shoot?

SI used to do it all the time, but they’ve drifted away from it recently. As the above Tom Stoppard quote touches on, there’s something to be said for two being a more magical number than three (or more).

One photo of, say, Kathy Ireland? Wonderful.One photo of Elle Macpherson? Magnificent.Put the two of them together in a pool? You have the single greatest photograph ever taken.So it follows that if you threw in Rachel Hunter, a woman easily gorgeous enough to hold company with Elle and Kathy, the hotness should continue growing exponentially, right?Well…

It doesn’t. I am not sure why. Maybe you just don’t know where to focus. Maybe the bodies all get in the way of each other. Maybe it’s the difference between the viewer contemplating a ménage à trois (something unlikely but possible) and contemplating an all-out orgy (pure fantasy, never gonna happen).

Reviews were mixed of the 1994 cover, judging from the letters section of the March 14 issue. Rick Duttenhofer of Boca Raton writes, “What a beautiful cover. Good things certainly come in threes.” But Jack Scarangella of New Rochelle retorts, “More is not necessarily better.”

(Philip W. Shoemaker of Raleigh writes, “The women on your cover are beautiful, but Kathy Ireland and Rachel Hunter are in awkward poses that are uncomplimentary to their beauty.” What you and I know, and Philip W. Shoemaker did not, was that Kathy and Rachel were both pregnant. For what it’s worth, I disagree with Phil about Rachel. I think she looks gorgeous. Kathy does look pale, and she spent the whole issue covering her stomach.)

The tipping point is between two and three. Some great pairings have sprung up over the years.Even a couple of covers. Twin sisters Yvette and Yvonne Sylvander in 1976:…and, twenty years later, polar opposites Valeria Mazza and Tyra Banks:(Walter Iooss, in his book Heaven, shares journal entries from his swimsuit shoots. He wrote this about Valeria and Tyra in South Africa: “Shoot (sic) what could be the cover of the issue. Tyra + Valaria (sic) in leapord (sic) bikinis on the beach. B+W girls.” The man is paid to take pictures, not win spelling bees.)

But tip over into three, and it gets awkward.
This was the centerfold of the 1994 issue. Veronica Blume, Rebecca Romijn, and Judit Masco look like they’re watching a child perform a magic trick just off camera.

1992. Ashley Richardson, Shana Zadrick, and Vendela. Those three classic poses: leaping, sunbathing, winking.

1990. Judit Masco, Kathy Ireland, and Akure Wall act out some half-assed cheerleader carwash fantasy sequence.

1989. This is particularly egregious because Rachel Hunter (on the right) is clearly not wearing a thong. She’s been asked to stuff a traditional bikini bottom into the cleft of her buttocks to match the suits of Stephanie Seymour and Maria von Hartz. If it were just her, or just the other two, no such decision would have been made.
And then there are the massive group shots, where you cram models into the frame like college kids into a phone booth. These are for special occasions, like celebrating your 40th anniversary with a “greatest hits” collection:…or showing off twenty years’ worth of cover models:…or realizing that one out of every three Brazilians is a bikini girl:All of these are sexier in theory than in practice. A wall of bikinis will put a smile on your face that there are so many beautiful women in the world. But it kind of becomes wallpaper after that. One or two girls—you’ve got something to concentrate on. So that pic of Julie and Irina is promis—

Uh-oh.I believe this pic was tweeted by MJ Day. The one on the left, if we are to judge by the color of the bikini, is Julie. On the right: that looks like Irina’s face.

Whose butt is in the middle?

Well, at least her suit isn’t stuffed up into it. I guess we’ll find out in February.