Listen, lady - I’m not interested in beating anyone down for siding with Team SI, as long as they get there from an intellectually honest place. I’m always happy when people look at images critically, work through the possible intentional and unintentional messages, and — understanding all of that, and how the image can, intentionally or unintentionally, impact different groups of people — come to a decision that’s more than just knee jerk identity politics.

I don’t think anyone at SI intended any malice. At best, they’re totally clueless as to how this would look, and at worst, their guilty to playing up the sexualized nature of women (and female athletes) already at work in society. What makes me angry is that when women register problems with this picture, the reaction is to shout them down, tell them they missed the point, shame them into shutting up. It’s worth discussing why some people (since not all the critics of this photo are women) have problems with this photo, and looking at how that reflects on the culture as a whole.

If we lived in a world where female athletes, even the ones that aren’t leggy and blonde and gorgeous, graced the cover of magazines all the time in a variety of athletic positions, this picture wouldn’t seem so egregious. If women weren’t constantly sexualized and objectified in ads and art and other forms of media, maybe this ad wouldn’t have stuck out. But it did, and there’s value in discussing why.