Story highlights Peggy Drexler: SI swimsuit edition cover baldly about reducing women to sex objects

Drexler asks why is there no heralded magazine cover showing a man

Why is it only normal to "celebrate the female form"? she asks

Peggy Drexler is the author of "Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers, and the Changing American Family" and "Raising Boys Without Men." She is an assistant professor of psychology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and a former gender scholar at Stanford University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

(CNN) On Wednesday night, Jimmy Fallon opened "The Tonight Show" with a big reveal: a first look at the cover of this year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, featuring model Hannah Davis, and quite a lot of her at that.

The ultra-revealing cover shows Davis pulling down her already-minuscule bikini bottoms to within a millimeter of an area typically reserved for intimate partners and gynecologists. She's been waxed, it is evident, to bald perfection. One wrong breath, and she'd expose actual labia (how's that for newsstand-appropriate?)

Peggy Drexler

Of course, Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit spectacular has never been without controversy. It's almost intended for controversy. Last year's cover featured three topless models, although they faced away from the camera. Supermodel Kate Upton's 2012 cover featured her in similarly barely there bikini bottoms.

Putting aside the fact that a woman is more likely to end up on the cover of Sports Illustrated for her ability to look amazing in a bikini than for her accomplishments as an athlete -- and indeed few press mentions of Davis' cover have noted that she is a former tennis champion, while few have omitted the fact that she is Derek Jeter's girlfriend -- it's possible to consider the notion that the issue's purpose is to celebrate the female form, with a side of swimwear.

I'm not opposed to celebrating beauty, especially when a woman works hard to achieve and maintain it. The idea of "if you have it, use it" is OK by me, even if the beauty the swimsuit issue tends to show off is a very specific sort of beauty. (Indeed, perhaps the biggest disappointment is that Davis' headline-generating cover overshadows what truly is a positive step for female empowerment: the issue's first-ever inclusion of a plus-size model, Robyn Lawley, and in a bikini of her own design, no less. But you're hearing far less about that.)

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