This year, in an effort to be a little more sensitive to those who might be upset by the images, Sports Illustrated hired me to write Trigger Warnings to precede each photograph:

Trigger Warning:

Viewing of the following image of totally inaccessible supermodel Tanya Mituyshin may trigger traumatic memories of the time you saw high school goddess Marie-Therese Vitzhum in a bikini at a pool party when you were in grade 10. You might recall how out of your league she was and how she seemed like she might have been from Europe, or some angel galaxy that was as far from Ottawa as anything could possible be. You might recall feeling bony, insufficient and pale, watching as she sat piggyback on the shoulders of the muscular Randy Rafter, her breasts pressing against the back of his head as she leaned forward laughing. This image of Tanya Mituyshin could trigger such memories, creating a constant, deeply haunting reminder that you never mustered the courage to speak to MT– as she was known to her friends– and how regardless of the status and success you might achieve, you will always feel like that overlooked and scared 14 year-old boy.

Trigger Warning:

Viewing of the following image of supermodel Hannah Davies may trigger traumatic memories for people who have had difficult relationships with fishing nets in their past. This photograph could spark a deeply repressed memory of the time your friend, as a “prank,” threw a fishing net over you down by the boathouse while attending a cottage party, and instead of fighting to escape from the net, you lay in a fetal position and quietly wept for your mother, certain that you were about to be murdered, as you had always had premonitions of death by fish net.

Trigger Warning:

Viewing the following image of supermodel Gigi Hadid may trigger feelings of profound resentment and homicidal rage in people with a history of despising life in a society where Gigi Hadid, a glittering, young celebrity, is considered an achievable model of feminine beauty. Recollections of unreasonable and cruel demands may flood over you as you navigate the aisles of Shopper’s Drug Mart, your mind flashing red to every cultural message that has ever helped make you feel that you were somehow just not enough. You’re just trying to get some shit done after a long, grinding day behind your desk at the Ministry of Transportation, and then there’s Gigi, smoulder-glowing out at you from the pages of a stupid magazine, and suddenly, before you know it, you’ve kicked the hell out of an entire display stand of kale-and-beet-infused shampoo and punched-out a pharmacist, Club Optima points be damned.

1. The Smiling Poncho (All staff must wear a poncho, and the chef will wear a sombrero with little, hooked fish hanging off the brim. It will be fun!)

2. Fish and Ships (You will sell ship knickknacks as an alternate revenue stream at the front desk.)

3. Clamorama (Deep-fried clams will be a specialty.)

4. Blood In The Water (This Risto will have a shark-attack themed décor. It will really stand out from the crowd and when you order the signature plate of paella, the theme music to Jaws will play as the serving staff brings it out. We will be a destination for birthday and bachelor parties, so if legal, we will have all serving staff working in bikinis and speedos. GAY FRIENDLY.)

4. Los Peces Sexy (Obviously, this means The Sexy Fish in Spanish. Consider Tango dance lessons in the evening?)

5. Scales And Males (This would be a gay restaurant)

6. Scales And Tails and Males (This would be a more flamboyant and risque gay restaurant)

7. Something Fishy. (This is cute, and I think that each night you should stage a marine-themed murder mystery production as entertainment for the dining guests.)

8. Crabbies (Part of the appeal of this incarnation would be the gruff, sailor-like atmosphere and service.)

9. Fishing for a compliment? (Could become popular with people on first dates!)

10. The Fishcotheque (On the weekends it a disco and fine seafood restaurant.)

A moment later I passed a man of around 70. He was wearing a leather bomber jacket and wrap-around sunglasses, the sort of look a suburban 50 year-old dad with a rock n’ roll heart might sport at a concert. He sat alone on a patio eating an omelette and drinking a half-liter of white wine–somehow anachronistic, as if a postcard from another era. It was a perfect autumn day and he was unhurried, inhaling the sunlight and pretty girls walking by as if they were oxygen– the leaves turning purple and orange around him.

And from not far off, the sound of opera drifted unexpectedly through traffic. In a language imagined rather than understood, a woman’s voice, clear and controlled, rose and fell to a piano keeping pace. The music was coming through a church window, and upon hearing something so perfect in its accidental trajectory, I had to close my eyes and let the world become just that one thing.

(Photo by Lynda Hall)

Waiting on the beach was an array of kites billowing in the wind like an assembly of tents pitched at an outdoor concert. The surfers preparing to take them out to the water were all so beautiful, unselfconscious and sincerely indifferent to the world watching them, that they seemed holier, of a different order than the rest of us. Fully alive in their bodies, they had been seized by a passion around which their entire lives were organized. Working jobs where they could, they migrated the world seeking out the best combination of wind and waves. Mostly European, they were a tangle of different languages, their communication physical rather than verbal.

(Photo by Rob Hyndman)

Kite Surfing looks insanely challenging, and the surfer’s bodies, driven by their craft, were lithe, hard and practical. Even their children had a preternatural purity to them. Confident, little water bugs, they were free of tan lines and all shared these seraphic mops of hair, as if creatures from another planet. I don’t want to turn it on too much, but it was striking, even mesmerizing.

By the pool at the resort was an expensive looking black woman with the body of a Playmate. We made eye contact and I nodded toward her, but she gave me a dismissive and imperious look, immediately snapping her sunglasses down and scrolling through her iPhone. Later, when a man with an NFL build came by, she became animated and solicitous, eventually striking cheesecake poses for his camera.

Lying in a beach chair was a woman in her late 40s. She was wearing an intensely white bikini that offset her deeply penetrated, lurid tan, had immense fake breasts and hair that was dyed the kind of blonde that can only be synthesized in a lab. All day she lay alone, inert but for occasionally turning over. Every once in awhile her boyfriend, a man in his 50s who oozed vanity, would come by. Top-heavy like a body builder, he had meticulously attended sideburns that were the star of his face, and he walked about in a way that called for attention, which once gathered, he would lead back to his bronzed trophy who just lay there, waiting for him to need her.

The surfers didn’t seem to care if you saw them. Having fully committed themselves to something that they loved, they became beautiful. It was an accident, a byproduct of a physical and supernal devotion that contrasted sharply with those few there who saw beauty as a destination, something that lived on the surface,  could be acquired and then spent like money. 

And just a little further off, in the pool a woman was delicately immersing herself in the water. Her mother leaned over, speaking softly, “ We had a very tough Christmas, Jane was the nanny of one of the children killed at Sandy Hook and we’re just trying to put it all back together and find some light, you know?”