Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover 2014: Butts are the new everything.

Friends, humour me for a moment.

Take a look at the last six years of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit magazine covers.

(I promise this is going somewhere.)

Thoughts?

Nothing out of the ordinary here? Just the ghosts of Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriends past and run-of-the-mill female objectification under the guise of sports ‘literature.’

Right?

Now take a look at this year’s cover:

Notice anything different?

I mean, how could you not notice those three bums staring you in the face?

While I have nothing against Nina Agdal, Lily Aldridge and Chrissy Teigen or their perky derrières, this year’s swimsuit cover featuring not one, but three bums seems, somehow…monumental.

In the magazine’s long history, almost every other year’s Swimsuit Issue (lauded as a pinnacle in a model’s career) features a woman (or several) front on to the camera.

Look back through 50 years of covers and you’ll only ever find two examples of women with their bum’s facing the camera. Once in 1974 with Ann Simonton, and in 2004 with Veronika Vařeková.

Now decade on, the butt is back again. And more prominent that ever before.

Clearly, there is male gaze at play here, but this from the Sports Illustrated website shows that even the cover girls think their asses stole the show:

OK, so, which of you would you say really got the cover?
[Laughter]
Lily: “All of us!”
Chrissy: “If I were to pick . . . I would have to say our butts won it.”

Is this…

Are we…

Are we witnessing the dawning of an Ass Age?

Computer says yes.

Just this week Kim Kardashian had to issue a statement of behalf of her ass, telling people once again that no, she didn’t have butt implants and asked, Can we please stop talking about my ass now, you guys?

Even though she likes to post pics like these:

Kim’s epic rant followed on from an earlier ass-centric event. Everyone’s favourite clothing retailer American Apparel took tasteless to a whole new level by featuring a bumhole in their latest advertising campaign. Yes, you read that read right. A bumhole.

The woman featured in the advertisement apparently for a skirt is leaning over bike handlebars with a g-string only just covering what she had for breakfast. Classy. Don’t know about you but that makes me want to buy a skirt PRONTO.

And so, it appears that butts are the new everything.

Bum selfies are now de riguer on Instagram. There’s even a woman’s bum who has more Instagram followers than US Vogue and Australian Vogue combined. Jen Selter now has 2.4 million followers on Instagram alone. To put that in perspective she’s fast catching Lady Gaga, who has just over 3 million followers.

Take a look:

Clothed bum selfies are one thing, but it’s now perfectly acceptable to upload a photo of your bare derriere to social media (save for a flimsy g-string holding your dignity in tact).

Lea Michele’s done it, as has Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, and Ke$ha. Even Queen Bey’s ass has been freeze-framed and ricocheted around the world when she wore that g-string-leotard contraption while performing ‘Drunk in Love’ with husband Jay-Z at the Grammys.

Heck, there’s now such a thing as bum psychics – Rumpologists – who can predict your future just by looking at your buttocks.

This all leads me to the conclusion that 2014 is not in fact the Year of the Horse, it’s the Year of the Ass.

What do you think about this ‘trend,’ ass-tastic or awful?

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