Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Missile Halima Aden Becomes First Model Featured In A Burkini

SI- We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Halima Aden is the newest member of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit family, making history as the first Muslim model to wear a hijab and burkini in the magazine.

The Somali-American model was born in Kenya at the Kakuma Refugee Camp, where she lived until the age of seven before moving to the United States. For her SI Swimsuit rookie spread, we couldn’t think of a more perfect place travel than her birth country, where she shot at Watamu Beach with photographer Yu Tsai.

About fucking time. This is tremendous news. For so long, magazines and movies have propagated the narrative that tiny, cheeky bikinis and thigh-hugging trunks are choice beachwear. You can’t walk ten feet across a beach in this country without stumbling upon some tits or cocks that are barely tucked out of sight.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be the only child in the shallows wearing a long sleeve “rash guard” with no chance your chest will touch a surf board? To constantly pull the clinging fabric off your chest because the chafing of wet shirt against nipple is opening a portal for the salt water to sting like you’re breastfeeding 10,000 jellyfish? To be mocked relentlessly by your half-naked chums who frolic and splash and show off their hairless bods, wrestling and mounting shoulders for chicken fights that end quickly because wet bodies are slippery when not covered by a fucking shirt?

Here I am, swimming with dolphins in Hawaii at 20. Betcha can’t guess which one I am!

For decades, the narrow-minded casting people at Sports Illustrated swimsuit have adhered to the “less fabric is more” for their publication. Hand bras and sand thongs splashed across their pornographic pages from cover to cover. Until this year. Thanks to the stunning Halima Aden, we have a champion for those who don’t want to look like Gary Busey’s scrotum at 45. This heroic young woman, this pioneer of pigment, is showing that you can look sexy while protecting your body from melting. With any luck, we’ll see a proliferation of full-body swimwear this summer. And it couldn’t come soon enough, what with the thinning of the ozone layer and all.

Move over, Danielle. I’ve got a new potential ex-girlfriend in town.