THIRTEEN Specials
Beyond The Gaze: Jule Campbell's Swimsuit Issue
Special | 1h 28m 1sVideo has Closed Captions
Jule Campbell transformed a magazine into a media empire: the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
In the 1960s, Jule Campbell shattered glass ceilings, transforming a struggling magazine into a media empire: the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Over her 32-year reign, she championed intelligence and empowered supermodels like Tyra Banks and Christie Brinkley. Explore the changing gaze from objectification to body positivity and witness a legacy that continues to inspire. From Tribeca Films.
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THIRTEEN Specials is a local public television program presented by THIRTEEN PBS
THIRTEEN Specials
Beyond The Gaze: Jule Campbell's Swimsuit Issue
Special | 1h 28m 1sVideo has Closed Captions
In the 1960s, Jule Campbell shattered glass ceilings, transforming a struggling magazine into a media empire: the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Over her 32-year reign, she championed intelligence and empowered supermodels like Tyra Banks and Christie Brinkley. Explore the changing gaze from objectification to body positivity and witness a legacy that continues to inspire. From Tribeca Films.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship[music] -I always worked with the same components, sky, sun, sand, girl, swimsuit.
Those five things happened every year.
-The magazine reaches 70 million adults each year.
Jule Campbell is the swimsuit's founding editor.
She oversaw every issue between 1965 and 1996.
-Let's get her jacket off.
-Walter, wait.
-What?
-You wait till she works it.
-Okay.
-Because this is kind of a dock jacket.
It's really important.
How tight are you shooting?
-I'm getting full body.
-Good.
-Oh, yes.
That's true.
-That's not the way you wear one of those jackets, though.
-You're looking at one of the most profitable ventures in publishing.
-No, not a picture of her bum, but a picture where you see her bum.
-No.
-You don't want that?
-No.
I think the way she's doing it, three-quarters, a little cover.
The rest will-- I got all the NOW feminist women after me.
I'm already going straight to hell.
[music- She Looks Cute In Her Bathing Suit - Bob Kennedy with The Seashore Cuties] -Amidst the setting of serene water, there's been a storm of protests from anti-pornography groups.
-I'm taking the brunt for the others whose magazines expose a great deal more than we do.
[music- She Looks Cute In Her Bathing Suit - Bob Kennedy with The Seashore Cuties] -The woman who lives in this historic farmhouse in rural New Jersey is a cook, a gardener, a grandmother, and the creator of one of the most controversial icons of American pop culture, the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
-I am happy that I never had a boring life.
A lot of struggles, but struggles are good.
If you survive them, you're stronger.
Fight for what you really want.
-It wasn't easy working as a woman in Time Inc.
-The 1986, '87, and '88 cover model, Elle MacPherson.
-She was such a powerhouse with these guys.
-Just to go into that old boys' club of Sports Illustrated, especially at that time.
-It was run by men for men.
She came in with a voice and an opinion, and she stood her ground, and she never really got the credit that she deserved.
-Footballs were flying through the air, and she was being sexually harassed and making a lot less money.
Meanwhile, guess who creates the billion-dollar franchise?
-Beauty's in the beholder's eye.
If someone finds this terribly sexy, that's okay, but I haven't exploited her.
-People were like, "Oh, it's gratuitous."
That's because they didn't know the whole picture.
-Women who support women, women who see the beauty in women, why would you not want to support them?
-She changed my life.
-That issue is seen by an estimated 50 million people every year.
One-third of them, women.
That might not be what you'd expect, but then again, Jule Campbell is not what you'd expect either.
[Motorcycle speeds away] -If you respect beauty, you've nourished your soul.
Oh, my God.
This is how I feel like an editor again.
[music] -That's Cheryl.
This is a good one.
-There are just so many things you can do on a beach and so many poses, and there's something a little special to it.
-Yes.
-I wasn't into the obviously sexy, which made it even sexier that you weren't.
There's so much smut out there that to see a really semi-naked but clean, you really want to keep it.
I love this one.
It's so modern.
The hard thing for me working for a sports magazine is all the editors were guys.
When I showed the pictures, I would have the managing editor there, and he could salivate while he looked at them.
Sometimes I'd want to do this.
[chuckles] They wanted the sexiest pictures, and I would take them out so they'd never even see them because I thought it would cheapen the woman.
This is not usable.
Go in the bad pile.
They didn't care if they cheapened the woman at all, but I did.
These are grown men with children, little boys.
[Crickets chirping] -You have to tell me about this documentary.
-It's going to be about you and your life.
-It's very ambitious.
-Do you like the idea?
-Yes, I'm astounded.
-[laughs] -I wouldn't even be here to say, "No, that didn't really happen that way."
I'd love to hear what you would like to do because I'm a pretty good visionary.
I've helped a lot of people that said, "I never thought of that."
-That's why I'm doing what I do.
-It's unveiling tragedy, unveiling happiness.
-Yes.
You need to look at other people's lives to learn.
-This is the true meaning of documentary.
-That's a good question.
Documentary, dealing freely with historical events, especially of a recent and controversial nature.
Nobody uses a dictionary anymore.
-No.
-[laughs] [music] -Yes.
Wow, okay.
[Papers rustling] -Is that a Tyra one?
Oh, my God, it is.
Christie.
I wonder if this was Africa.
-Her career, I don't think she ever thought of it as a business.
She wasn't trying to create the most successful magazine in publishing history.
-I really wanted to be an artist.
My parents persuaded me that I could be an art teacher, and that did not appeal to me.
I went to journalism school, but I majored in advertising so I could use my art.
-She never talked about money.
She didn't like talking about money, but she was driven by her aesthetics, the beauty she perceived in people, nature, clothes, objects.
Sea glass, example.
She would collect things of no value.
-These are just doodles.
I'm in the garden room looking out.
What does the heart see that the eye doesn't or can't?
-Can you move that water thing?
It's in the shot.
Would Jule Campbell from SI want the Pyrex in the shot?
-No.
The cleaner, the better, so you know what your subject is.
Everyone thinks differently, I think, when they're filming because they're seeing and then they're trying to get it down so other people can see it.
I think filming is very personal, and it doesn't have to mean anything as long as you enjoy doing it.
-You were in the first wave of independent women after the war who were making their own way out in the workplace.
What was your first job at a school?
-Marketing consultant called Amos Parrish.
I said, "I want to be in your fashion office."
He said, "Most of the women in our fashion office haven't been to college."
He said, "Do you think they're going to take you by the hand and teach you?"
I said, "How can I get ahead?"
He said, "Go and work in a store and learn retailing."
That's why I got the job at Glamour.
They said, "We see you have your retailing experience."
-This is your first course in preparing for an office job.
You're starting a new career.
-The big job was filing.
I'd never filed in my life.
The woman I was working for said, "If you read everything that goes into this file, you'll know more about this magazine than anyone else."
I started going into the office on Saturdays.
From that point, it seems like every six months, I had a nice promotion.
There was a long corridor, and I was in an office here, but over here was the fashion office that I always wanted to get into because they were the ones who worked with the famous photographers and the models, and so forth.
I eventually became accessories editor.
-Do you like to talk about it?
-I'm comfortable with it.
-How did you get started at Sports Illustrated?
-How did I get started at Sports Illustrated?
Oh my God, that seems like a thousand years ago.
It's like, when did you have your first buggy ride?
I remember when I was at Condé Nast, we were in a bar one night, and everyone was talking about this new sports magazine that was coming out.
In 100 years, I never thought I would end up there.
Fred hired me right on the spot, one interview, and we just clicked.
He was tough on me.
He made me cry sometimes.
-You were a reporter within Smith's fashion section?
-Yes.
We did menswear, womenswear, and we did vacation houses and so forth.
Very often on ski stories, we went together.
You go to the best, the best stores, you go to the best hotels, you get the best guide.
Those are the kind of things I learned from him.
-Winning his respect is probably one of the highlights of my career.
I started, I guess, by covering football games.
What are you supposed to wear if you're an elegant woman and it's November?
You don't have to be that bright to know.
Number one, you bring a blanket.
Number two, you wear something warm.
Number three, you might have a little bottle of hooch to warm you up.
[Camera shutter clicking] -I don't feel I was a woman ahead of my time because there were fashion magazines all over the place.
I was tired of fashion magazines.
You go out and find something else.
You got to do what interests you, and then you hit on something that's like a new roadway.
It's amazing how things happen, isn't it?
-How long were you there for?
-In Sports Illustrated?
I worked 60 years.
I was freelance.
I was contract.
I was staff.
I went through a lot of phases up there.
That could have been the tennis.
Jule Campbell's sporting look.
That was my test shoot.
My first recollection is when she hired me to do tennis fashion.
I guess she was breaking me in.
-It was just to be able to recognize talent or humor.
People who had adventure in their background.
I found sports people were not phonies.
-She'd use other sports photographers, but there were no girls in my portfolio.
I look back, I don't even know how many women I shot as athletes.
-In the beginning, Jule did a ski story.
She would audition the models.
How are they going to be to travel with?
What are they like?
She really looked for who the person is, and can she connect with them?
Jule asked me if I could ski.
I said yes.
I didn't tell Jule I had only skied once, but I thought, "You know what?
I'll go, and I can do it."
We get to the top of this mountain, the sports photographer, because, of course, that's who she would hire, was going to ski along with me very quickly as I nearly took him out.
He's like, "How about we just photograph Kathy holding the skis?"
My goodness, what I wasn't prepared for was Jule Campbell.
What an education, experiencing this dynamic, brilliant, strong woman in a world that was really dominated by men.
I was in a world that was dominated by a lot of men who were sketchy character.
It was a world that didn't feel safe.
I know I would not have stayed in that industry as long as I had, if not for Jule.
She always missed the farm, the trees that were so meaningful, that represented her parents, the memories that she had there.
She fought so hard to always keep and protect that farm.
-Feels like a good beach wedding dress.
-Beautiful.
Marriage is not easy.
I don't care how much you love each other.
-You're realistic.
-It's a give-and-take share.
It's a big step.
I have to thank your mother for keeping this a family after they broke up.
-I know.
It's very nice.
-I'm also glad you aren't just a kid.
You're 30?
I was 30 when I was married.
-I think it's good.
It's nice.
-Call me if you want a shoulder.
I got two of them.
-[chuckles] Okay.
I will.
I don't want to leave you.
-God bless you.
You're not leaving me.
-I know.
-I've got the phone right here.
-That's true.
-Bye, mother of the bride.
You're going to cry.
-I'm going to cry for sure.
-You are going to cry.
That's why when I say goodbye to people, because I always think that might be the last one, but I don't say anything.
I just think it.
[dog barking] [music] -How did you meet Ronnie?
-Fire Island.
I was with a bunch of people from Glamour magazine, and he was with Fortune magazine.
We danced together on weekends.
I wasn't madly in love with him.
I thought he was a snob.
-You ended up marrying him.
-Yes.
I wasn't in a hurry to get married, no.
I didn't like that feeling of, "You're mine now.
You don't do anything without going through me."
It didn't sit well.
Will you look at the waistline?
My mother made my dress.
After the ceremony, the best men rocked the car.
It was a blue Buick, and they rocked it and rocked it.
[Crowd cheering] -I get very disturbed when I think of this.
I don't remember a lot of things of Ronnie.
-Thank you, too.
-I have to figure out how many years he's gone.
We were the same age.
I wonder why he had to die so much earlier than me.
It's like it came and went quickly.
-Let's talk about the history of this at Sports Illustrated.
It's somewhat of a tradition at this magazine to do an issue on bathing suits.
-It started in 1964.
In those days, we didn't have Super Bowl yet.
The last football game was on Christmas, or it was on New Year's.
The magazine was very thin, and it was before baseball, after football.
-Sports Illustrated didn't make money for 10 years.
It started to make money, believe it or not, the whole magazine did, with the arrival of the Swimsuit Issue.
André Laguerre was the second managing editor of the magazine.
He took the magazine from nowhere and created a form to it.
-André was more of a Renaissance man.
He was a sports nut, but he wasn't a jock.
He did the story on Proust.
There was bridge in the magazine, so it was much more involved with things other than sweat.
-The writer James Michener said the only American magazine that was better written than Sports Illustrated was The New Yorker.
It became the quintessential middle-class magazine of post-war America.
André Laguerre, a completely visionary editor, who understood how magazines would work.
-Everybody was terrified of him.
-Me being 22 or something and getting in the elevator with Laguerre was like-- He may have said hello to me.
I'm not sure.
After lunch, everybody had been putting down the sauce.
It was just like the old New York lunches that you've seen in shows like Mad Men.
Not a lot of things got done after three o'clock.
-We're talking about a time where there's men chasing women around desks.
Laguerre wasn't like that.
Laguerre recognized, in Campbell, this spirit, but she also had this veneer of toughness.
He took her under his wing.
One fall day in 1964, he calls his young assistant fashion editor Jule Campbell into his office and says, "Jule, my dear, how would you like to go someplace beautiful and put a pretty girl on the cover?"
[music] -I went to California because I thought we should use more natural kinds of women.
In California, they're bigger and healthier and look more like beach girls.
That is, in the days of Twiggy, everyone was really skinny.
When she appeared on the cover, it caused quite a sensation.
-Middle America just lost its mind.
-They made a big thing out of nothing.
That's how it got started, that the cover had to be something sexy that's going to catch your eye.
There was nothing sexy about it except it had cutouts.
-You had hundreds of letters coming in saying, "Who is this Sue Peterson?
She's wonderful.
I want to marry her."
One writer wrote, "Nudity was as dangerous to our country as the atom bomb."
With those two polarized, very measured responses, Laguerre and Jule Campbell knew they were onto something.
-Then I found this.
-These are all very early pictures, the beginning of the swimsuit story.
[music] -One of the things that made it work was I didn't have makeup people.
I didn't have hair people.
If a model got a sunburn, we photographed it.
That looked natural.
It was news.
The element of surprise in any kind of merchandising and so forth is what everybody tries to do.
It was a phenomenon because it sold twice as many magazines when I put one of my models on the cover.
A woman in a swimsuit is hard to beat, no matter what kind of athlete you are.
[music] -This was a time where, as pro football is growing, advertisers are becoming aware that sports fans, which previously had been this undesirable audience, was actually a upwardly mobile, attractive audience.
-It was a total male-dominated universe, and yet the one lady over there in the corner in this little small office with swimsuits hanging all over the place did the one issue of the year that generated a whole lot of money.
-Men ran the world and the staff, and that was the way it was.
It wasn't easy for her.
-My whole theory in showing sexy pictures, I didn't like lewdness.
I found it not attractive, and I didn't feel it represented me.
I think the public respected that.
What is lewd?
Lewd is bad taste to me because how can you make nudity lewd unless it's up here, because nudity is quite beautiful.
-What do you think about these new topless bathing suits?
-I suppose if I saw everybody else wearing them, I'd wear one, but the problem is I think you get picked up for indecent exposure.
-Otherwise, you don't object?
-No, not at all.
Men walk around with only one half of a bathing suit on.
Why shouldn't I?
-From that very first story that I did for André, there's also a story by Liz Smith, The Nudity Cult.
-Rudi Gernreich wasn't in Jule's first swimsuit issue.
He understood about fun and liberation of the female body, not for the male gaze, but for the woman herself.
That was the mood of the moment.
-I think a girl would have to go pretty long to wear such a thing.
I think men won't have respect for any girl at all, whether she's good or bad.
It'd be going back to the caveman days.
-Women are always under the microscope, and we're always being judged by what we wear and what we should have worn.
Here we are in one of our most revealing and natural, and raw versions of ourselves in a swimsuit, and people are going to dissect that.
-I think people should know I'm censoring while we're working.
Believe me.
I strive to take beautiful pictures, and that's why our locations are so important.
If we were taking girly pictures, we could do that in a studio.
-She was very interested in the composition of the photography, that it was more like a fashion story than it was a gratuitous girl-on-the-beach story.
She captured spirits.
Yes, it was encased in these beautiful locations and bodies, and it wasn't about the very overt sexuality that we're seeing today.
-I feel like you had a career that most women envy.
-Eh?
Sorry.
Eh?
I can't hear you.
I'm not helping you, am I?
-No, it's good.
It's awesome.
-Oh, God.
Why don't I tell you a story about how it feels to be getting old?
-Yes.
-Really?
-Yes, I want to know.
I want to know what's in front of me.
Cheers.
-Cheers to old age.
It's a hoax.
It's what you make it, kid.
It's not always in the glass.
I think old age can be cruel, and it can be beautiful.
It's funny.
When you get near the end of your life, I used to wonder what my mother was thinking, and now that I look back on it, I don't think she was thinking of anything because she was losing her memory, but I'm not in that kind of old age.
I'm surprised I still have fight in me, and that's good.
-Hi, Mom.
-Hi.
Nice to have you on the farm.
-We already know how photogenic you are from seeing you constantly on television.
This is just a homemade video.
-I'm not photogenic.
-Here, I'm casting Mom.
She's not wearing her blue and white striped shirt.
-Oh, I might say that for Graham's very first birthday, he's getting a striped shirt.
-Happy birthday to you.
-Happy birthday.
Happy birthday.
Happy birthday to me.
95?
My God, am I that old, Jill?
Look how peaceful it is down there.
You guys will be sitting out here, maybe next year, reminiscing about this year and where I was, and I'll be saying, "Don't you dare forget me."
Jill, I'm somewhere between crying and happy.
Life is all too short.
It comes, stays, it goes.
-This is called an iPhone, and they keep making these cameras better and better.
-Without all the bunch of equipment.
-Exactly.
-That's called the doggy pose.
I'd say no doggy pose.
The photographer always tried to do it, because I used to hear the guys talk about the pictures and the doggy pose.
I really didn't like it.
-It's demeaning.
-Yes, very.
-That's Cheryl Tiegs, America's first supermodel.
This is her Instagram.
-Oh, Jule.
It was a long time ago when we started Sports Illustrated.
I don't mean to jump on board, but Jule and I became a team.
I was in on it from the beginning.
My first cover, we were on the boat going home.
I was cold, so Jule put on this long-sleeved bathing suit.
I put my sunglasses on.
Jay Maisel was taking pictures.
He said, "Take your sunglasses off.
Take your sunglasses off."
I said, "No, I'm tired.
I don't want my picture taken."
[Camera shutter clicking] They put that on the cover.
That was me, a real person.
I wasn't a model at that moment.
I feel very comfortable that it was a female, because it is a very vulnerable situation.
I had the confidence and the security to do what I had to do.
The powerful position she put herself in, my God.
-In 1965, Jule featured a model in a net swimsuit with a flesh-toned lining.
Now, I understand that's not even real flesh, but the reaction was utter shock.
Then, in 1978, readers really had something to be shocked about when Cheryl Tiegs appeared in the real thing.
-Oh, you're not going to bring up the white fishnet.
[laughs] -How do I not bring up the white fishnet?
-The white fishnet was a throwaway shot.
-A picture you wouldn't even want to show anyone, taken on a miserable afternoon in the middle of nowhere in the Amazon.
-We were in Manaus.
It was awful light.
Then I went up to Cheryl, and because the light was bad, I said, "Would you please get wet?"
Because I thought if her skin glistened, we'd get some highlight.
-Getting the suit wet was what made it so see-through.
Before, it was just a bunch of cotton.
-It wasn't, "I'll see more if the suit's wet."
I edit all my own pictures, and I always edited them with Walter, and we pick out what we think are the best pictures, and that's what we show.
-We went through the slides, and we were putting them in order to try to keep the interest going.
We put that as the last slide in the tray.
-It was kind of, "Okay, wake up."
They printed it.
Everyone knew SI then.
-Cheryl became a megastar.
It just exploded.
It changed the world.
-The simplicity, I think, of just a girl walking on the beach in a bathing suit like that was intriguing.
I don't know.
[laughs] It's not my favorite shot.
-It wasn't just that there was a beautiful woman with visible breasts in the pages of Sports Illustrated.
It was a beautiful woman that Sports Illustrated readers felt like they knew.
It was Cheryl freaking Tiegs.
-It was controversial.
You could see anatomy, which I think, even at that time, which wasn't such a foreign idea.
I think it was a foreign idea in mainstream media.
-It was used in an artistic way to say, "We don't care about your boundaries."
It wasn't to turn you on.
Breasts, they're so political.
-You barely can even see a nipple, but it was the first.
-If you're that scared of boobs, you better put your head in the sand.
Honestly, though, news flash, we all have nipples.
Except mine do something.
Half the population doesn't.
[laughs] Scary.
-You've never seen a nipple before?
[laughs] I think it's true, though.
It comes down to that.
[music] [Protesters shouting] -Hey, ho, beauty pageants got to go -Jule used to get death threats.
They had people in front of the Time and Life Building picketing.
-Join us now.
-Swimsuits in a sports magazine is presenting us with an image that's impossible to live up to.
-I guess, Jule, we do know that sex sells, doesn't it?
-If I felt sex sells, then I wouldn't work on this.
I'm a career woman.
I'm a mother.
-It seems to be merely an excuse to show flesh.
Come on, Jule.
-There has been some criticism that what you're doing is taking advantage of females, the way some of the magazines that are sold that are very much more explicit about sex.
-I censor it very carefully, and I care.
If a feminist calls me and says, "Oh, you're selling out."
I'm not selling out.
It would be much easier to photograph them unclothed.
To make it attractive and appealing and still keep it in the realm of good taste, I think, is the reason it has been successful.
-Dear Jule, you should get a bonus.
-Thank you for making a cold winter bearable.
-Christie Brinkley- -Oh, this was fantastic.
-We can hardly wait for the letters.
-We got thousands of people wanting to cancel their subscriptions or say I was a perv or something.
I didn't know this for a while.
At the bar with André, they used to make bets on how many cancellations.
-Miss Tiegs has no class.
Jule Campbell, you should be ashamed.
I was disgusted.
Smut.
-Our son reads this.
-When I want Playboy, I'll buy Playboy.
-The powers that be at Sports Illustrated are overwhelmingly male and white.
You're talking about hegemonic masculinity here.
They were looking to attract that coveted 18 to 34 age demographic.
-There was a very fair question to be asked, "Why are we looking at swimsuit models in what is supposed to be a news magazine devoted to sports?"
Doctoral theses have been written on that very subject.
-The objectification, there's no question about that.
You have females in a magazine that are being consumed.
-That was what made women feel that other women were being exploited, the masculine gaze.
The swimsuit was a subversive item.
When they first started wearing swimsuits in the 1920s, the patriarchy in America didn't like it.
Everyone's got to step back and really accept the freedom of expression happening.
Jule was part of that.
She had to push some boundaries.
-Women should do what they want to do, but don't do it with anger.
Do it really quiet.
Maybe a little sneaky.
Why not?
As long as it's not dishonest.
Just be mysterious.
Something comes up, and you say, "Oh, I'm going to think about that.
I'll hold on that.
You don't have to tell everybody what you're thinking, who you are, or why you did what you did."
-I was reading the Michael Gross book on models, he all but credits the beginning of the supermodel era to Cheryl Tiegs and that '78 swimsuit issue.
-Jule really is responsible for the supermodel.
Jule wanted to know who is this person.
She even included the names and gave the women an identity.
-We have always recognized the name of the girl, so they become personalities more than models or mannequins.
-Models were hangers.
Models were props to put the clothing on.
-Jule wrote those captions mentioning the models by name, and so the readers started to feel like they knew some of those models.
-She didn't want to objectify women.
She wanted to make them people.
-She was setting us up for a future of being a person of clout, putting our names in there first and last.
That's what it did.
Jule wanted that.
-A high-fashion model doesn't mean that everybody knows your name.
It means that everybody in the fashion industry knows your name.
When Jule called me and said I was going to be on the cover of this magazine, I knew that everybody in America would know my name.
-I started to already think, "How can I apply this to a business?"
Being on the cover and having this adulation is one thing, but how can I translate that into a way that I can become financially independent, that I can start to command the work that I actually want to do?
-I was dreaming about being on the other side of the lens.
Working with Jule truly helped me get there.
-They became so much more capable to take that name and build brands around it and build lives around it and impact others around it.
-Then I found Christie.
-I had just done my first big shoot in Paris, and then they decided to give me the haircut of the moment.
They chopped off my hair and gave me a perm.
I didn't know what to do with this hair, so I bought a bunch of berets, and I just stuck the whole thing in my beret.
Now here I am in LA, and I'm asked to go meet Jule Campbell.
-She was as cute as could be.
I thought, "She looks like Miss California or Miss Sunjist Orange, just exuded health and had these Mary blue eyes."
I booked her for that story in Cancún.
-She said that she remembered me because I was the girl in the beret.
[laughs] Look at this.
I look like one of the Marx Brothers.
[laughs] The message is that sometimes it's the things that make you most insecure are the things that make you the most memorable.
Be you and get discovered.
My body was pretty bodacious.
It wasn't like a model's body, which was my big insecurity because I didn't think I looked like a skinny model.
She felt like it was inspirational for women to feel like, "I want to take care of myself," but she really was pushing the athletic part.
They took me out on this red dirt road, and I remember feeling like, "I'm running like an athlete for Sports Illustrated."
I was really trying to emphasize the run, so that made me not feel so self-conscious about it was to be strong.
She wasn't looking for perfection.
She was looking for some sort of energy.
The mixture of athletic and sexy, to the perfect degree that she did it, created a real niche.
-Christy was a natural.
That's about the only model I've ever worked with who did her first sitting, and she could do no wrong in front of the camera.
She didn't move.
She did everything right.
She worked for us one, two, three, four, it was five years before she got a cover.
Then she got three in a row, and she was made.
-Thank you.
-Jule would take off and do her thing for four or five weeks in the fall, deliver the pictures to André and Dick Gangel, the art director.
It was like an eight- or 10-page section in the magazine for a very long time.
-I think André liked me because I'm very family-oriented.
He invited himself up to our farm for the weekend.
He never gave me a big raise.
I thought if he liked me so much, he should have given me a raise.
-Roy Terrell succeeded André in 1972.
-Terrell leaves in '79, and Rogin starts.
-I asked him for a raise, Gill, and told him what I was earning.
His answer to me was, "You've got a husband."
I went into his office one day, and I said, "Would you write a letter for me?
I want it from the managing editor.
It's to Carol Alt.
Would you ask her to put weight on and tell her I'm not going to use her if she doesn't?"
-In the very beginning, when I was so young, my father and mother, they were worried.
Jule wanted me to wear this G-string, and I was like, "Oh.
It is like being naked.
I can't wear that G-string.
I just can't do it."
Jule was like, "Okay, no worries.
I want you in something you're comfortable in."
Then, when the magazine came out, there was Christie Brinkley with just the G-string.
I thought, "That looks so beautiful."
Never again did I ever deny Jule a suit that she wanted to put on me.
-I'm going to do an orange suit now, and then a white suit because there's a white rim of light where the surface-- -The best part was when we had to change on the beach, and Jule would stand around you with towels.
The suit came down, the other suit went up.
-The gutter of the center of the page will run right through her shoulder and through her bosom here.
Now, Walter and I are going to have a conference over that.
-She worked all year to do this.
-We used to call them the coffins.
10, 15 giant coffins of bathing suits.
She would try the suits and try the suits and try the suits.
-To have a very subtle color, I haven't come to it yet.
You said this looked great.
-That looked beautiful on her.
-Because she looked at you, she looked at your personality, she looked at your body, and she said, "No, not that one."
Sometimes, "Wait a minute.
What do you mean?
I should look good in everything.
I'm a model."
-Very proud of you.
-Thank you.
-I sound like a mother, and I am a mother.
-Listen, you've been my mother for almost 40 years, or like my mother.
-Very happy for you, honey.
-I'll come back and visit.
-It's just like he got a really good shot of you walking in the bushes, which is really nice.
It's called B-roll.
Can we do one more of those?
All right, turn around and walk up to the porch, and then I'll meet you up there.
Is it weird that I'm doing this documentary?
-I think I'm grateful, and there's admiration, respect.
The only thing is I need my fact checker.
That would be you, since you know more about my mother than I do.
It's a surprising amount I don't know because she kept me out of that life, and I didn't seek to be in it.
She was hardly around.
When she came home, she didn't talk about work.
All I really cared about was getting something to eat.
-How did having a baby change things for you?
-I would do that differently.
I went back to work after seven weeks.
I would spend more time with my baby.
I have that guilt to live with.
-Do you feel guilty?
-Because I can't remember.
I'd come home at night, and I was tired, and someone else had bathed my baby.
Someone else had fed the baby, and I missed taking him to school.
-Who's that?
-You tell me.
This is your life.
-This is what we used to do.
-That's our dad.
-The one with the long, floppy hair must be me.
-I know when Bruce was born, my mother took over.
It was like her baby.
-When I was very young, I missed her when she was gone all the time.
I had a support system which included four au pairs.
There was Edna, the first one.
I later had Puluv, a crazy Russian, who thought it would toughen me up to eat poison ivy and get soaking wet in the rain.
Then Greta, the bad one, who used to throw things at me and beat me.
Then Erica, the sweet one.
-Did your mom know that that woman beat you?
-Only when I told them, and then they fired her.
-Whenever I went on a trip, I cooked for a whole week.
That's not the same as having your mother's arms around you.
I see this because I see how my son is raising his children.
When I even say that to my husband, I say, "We weren't like that."
-She did talk quite a bit about Bruce, and was a little unsure if she had done all she should have as a mom.
You know what?
That's a crap thing to put on women.
Because what about dad?
It's like, why are we supposed to be guilty for not being enough around our kids?
-When I had my kids, she didn't want me to work.
Now I understand her better.
I was so angry when she was like that with me.
-To this day, it's -- hard to be a woman who's trying to balance motherhood with a decent career.
We are supposed to make a choice, while men can have both, because the woman does all the work.
-I hated parents that pushed their children.
I never pushed Bruce, but Bruce pushed himself.
He was always president of the class or whatever.
He got into Harvard without a problem.
I don't know why he pushed himself.
He wanted to be the best something, I think.
-Yes, I was seeking approval, for sure.
-Were you proud of her?
-Yes.
Yes, I was.
[music] -That is great design.
Again, here, look at it.
She's running off.
She's going to run for a long time.
-I remember reading somewhere, Jule Campbell has to wait outside the photo lab because if Mark gets to the pictures first, he's going to want to run the ones that are the most revealing.
-No, that's not true.
It doesn't work that way.
-Right.
It never did?
-No.
He likes to see a pretty girl like any other man.
Maybe the pictures under his guidance have been a little sexier, but it's also because times have changed.
Each of the managing editors, their perception of women is very interesting, and I can't really tell you everything.
[music] -It's time to start respecting women for who they are, not the way that they look.
[Crowd cheering] -Ann Simonton was a Swimsuit Issue model and later became one of the biggest critics of the swimsuit issue.
-We are anti-censorship.
We're also pro-nudity and sexuality.
No, that it's not the sex, per se, the explicitness, per se, but it's the marketing of women taking a real human being and turning her into an object that we are against.
-From her own personal experience, she talks about sexual assault.
-It's time that we make some changes in the society.
Rape is a violent thing that's happening to too many women.
-You certainly can make that connection between violence against women because that happens when women are seen not as subjects with agency, but as people to be consumed and to be maneuvered at will.
Ann Simonton, she's like, "Okay, we've got this whole issue about swimsuit models.
What if we devoted that to female athletes?"
The guarantee was not to female athletes that they at least show up in one issue a year.
That guarantee is given to swimsuit models.
-My answer to the feminists who've given me a hard time, if they knew that I'm never farther away than the photographer's elbow.
I also have my own camera, so I can see what he sees.
If I don't like what he's doing, I'll say, "I don't want that kind of picture," a provocative position or whatever.
They'll say, "Oh, just a few pictures for me."
I'll say, "No."
If he continues, I just walk in front of his camera, and I go and fix her hair.
I can hear him swearing behind me.
When I turn around, I say, "Are you ready?"
This is somebody's daughter.
The reason this story has lasted as long is that you walk a very thin line of propriety.
Are you going to be nasty?
I don't care if they think I'm a nun and I surprise them the next year-- -I wasn't there to tease men.
I was there for being outside and being healthy and being natural.
I felt like Jule always had my back and that she wasn't going to allow other people to be around that were going to exploit us in different ways.
-She's doing the best she can with the tools that she has and is working within the system that she exists in and the time that she exists in.
One person can exact some change, but one person cannot take down the whole system and fight the entire editorial staff.
[somber music playing] -Sir, once again, I would like to see Sports Illustrated explore more of women's athletic abilities and less of their bare bottoms.
-I appreciate the public service you perform by reminding your female readers to resume their exercise programs.
May I suggest a similar issue featuring Olympic water polo or swimming team modeling, the latest in men's swimwear?
-Jule's looking for athletic swimsuit models, not lewd, fairly covered.
Her success with the swimsuit issue contributes to this real blurring and this emphasis on female athletes needing to look like swimsuit model standards to get any attention from the magazine.
Sports isn't enough in the way that it's enough for men.
Jule's assigned a responsibility.
She does it very well.
I think it complicates matters for female athletes.
-In the beginning, we were doing this shot and the guys were in the water and Cathy Dara and I were walking past.
Then we did the same to them.
-Is this the men's polo team?
-Yes, that's what I thought.
-Let's see because I don't think they have in it where the women are checking out the men.
I found hundreds of those slides.
-What Jule does is, working with the photographers, they edit everything down to the last couple of hundred pictures.
Then I look at the last couple of hundred pictures with them and my art director and Jule and oftentimes the photographer, and then pick the pictures from those last couple of hundred.
-They always waited until I left the room.
I could hear as the door was closing, "Oh my, did you see?
Mm.
Mm."
I think, "Grow up.
You have to know what I'm dealing with," the boys club.
I didn't show anything I didn't like.
[chuckles] I had that control.
-She does have gatekeeping responsibility, but are there photos that didn't make it into the swimsuit issue that she wanted?
That's huge.
You've got power, but up to a point.
-I think anonymity is really pretty great.
I wasn't ever particularly interested in the actual work, but I wanted the job.
I wanted to do SI.
Yes, I hang photos of myself on trees.
I just gaze at them adoringly all-day-long.
It's only looking back now with the context of Me Too and all of us revisiting everything that we normalized so much that I can say, oh, wow.
-It's my last day here.
Last day to shoot.
I'm leaving tomorrow.
We're just going to go do a shot in the hotel room because it's cold.
Tell me how you feel knowing that this is my last day.
I know you guys are going to be in mourning.
[crosstalk] -She can go home and get her messages.
"Oh, Stacy, you want to go eat dinner tomorrow night at the bar?"
"No, I don't want him.
Where's the guy I want?"
No message.
That's the way it always is, right?
The ones you want, you can't get.
There must be men you can't get.
-I don't know.
I never met one I couldn't get.
-You just met two.
-You met two.
-Put it this way, Stacy.
I've intoxicated myself every night to the point of oblivion.
I still haven't knocked on your door.
-I'm going to shut the room every night.
-[crosstalk] -Let's get serious.
This is not Mecca.
Hey, Albert.
-Hey, listen, after my last few days, it's Mecca.
Believe me.
-See, Stacy, I'm sorry it's going to hurt, but see, that's the reason I don't have to.
I get to throw that on the bed and lick her into a frenzy anytime I want.
What do I need you for?
-Exactly.
I agree.
-That's right?
-Just hope she's still there when you get home, loser.
-Good point.
-When I went to Paris and I suddenly had to be working with all these really famous photographers who had been outed, who are notorious rapists, who were so inappropriate, and my response was always to joke or to gross them out.
That was a defense against that power being taken away from me, to make a deal with the devil every single day.
-Just stay like that until the model comes out.
-When I would vent to Julia about that stuff going on, she would be outraged and supportive and share her own stories and commiserate.
When you've almost been raped a few times and roofied and beaten on the streets in Paris and had photographers exposing themselves to you and the former president groped you in front of Jeffrey Epstein and it goes on and on and on, yes, there's a lot of baggage there, so there's a lot to sort through.
I do remember at one point this argument about, well, it's a celebration of the female form and everything, but who's painting and carving the sculptures?
The men.
-Can we cut to the Jamaica trip?
-Yes.
-Let's go to Jamaica.
We had [?]
Carol, Ault, and then this phenom coming in, Paulina.
My assistant, Louis, and I were sitting in the bar in the hotel, and all we could think about, "When is Paulina going to come in?"
There's an elderly couple sitting over here to our right, and this girl walks in her T-shirt, handwritten, Too Drunk to --.
I said, "You're going to have to take that off.
Jule's going to have a heart attack."
That was the first time I ever met Paulina.
She's a concert pianist.
She could play.
-This is the piece that I played when we were in Jamaica.
When I ended, I noticed there was Walter and his assistant sitting in the corner.
Damn, that's great.
I think the pot might have had something to do with the fact that Walter thought I was such a great pianist.
[piano playing] In 1983, I lived in Paris.
I remember coming into an agency late in the afternoon.
"Guess what?
We think you might have a booking for Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue."
Literally, my reaction was like, "I don't do tennis clothes, okay?"
They're like, "No, no, no you don't understand.
We're not talking about tennis clothes here."
This was my idea to tie my hair with my bra because I was always running mountopolis.
Then Jule was like, "Hey, why don't we do a shot of that?"
The palm leaf was Walter's inspiration.
This is the girl I was then.
-That's one of the best pictures I've ever taken.
-This is what Jule taught me.
When you have a bikini on, all you have to do is embrace your body and who you are.
There's such a sense of freedom to that.
The shots are so much less overt.
They're so much less sexually, whatever, explicit or whatever it is these days.
This is where we get to how times have changed.
We have, I think, evolved as a society and things that were absolutely normal and acceptable 40 years ago no longer are.
I always just speak from personal experience that to me, when I felt objectified, it was because I didn't have a say in how I was portrayed.
Now, when I put myself out in a bikini or nothing, that's my choice.
To me, it's objectification or celebration.
Can it be both at the same time?
I don't see why not.
We have been taught that our bodies are valuable if they're pretty.
Then if you exhibit that body, you are technically objectifying yourself.
You're also celebrating yourself.
We, as women, this is what we have been given as our powers.
Then we are shamed for using them.
Women will be shamed for everything, won't they?
I got through that one without -- up once.
-Yes.
-It was under Mulvoy that the thing went from being 20 pages to being 36 or 40 pages all of a sudden.
-Mark was the one who made it larger right off the bat.
-In 1984, when I did get the magazine, I set out to do several things.
I wanted to redesign the magazine.
I wanted to run pictures larger.
I think in very small order, we doubled and tripled the size of the annual swimsuit issue.
-This year has to sell more than last year.
That pressure was always there.
-1975, seven pages.
1973, seven pages.
Here we have-- I think it was 48.
I lost count.
-Most of the advertising that was invested into the business the whole year came from the interest driven by that particular issue.
We had a lot of pressure on us to perform to a certain extent.
I know Jule did too.
-Sports Illustrated putting out its 25th anniversary swimsuit issue.
Rather than the normal several pages that they have once a year, they put out a special entire issue.
-I remember going to the ad people and saying, listen, I need a lot of pages.
You put 30 or 40 or 50 more pages of swimsuits and you sell a couple of million copies on the newsstand.
That's a lot of money.
-Jule was able to take this idea and migrate it to all of these different platforms successfully.
-This year, the photo spread is the subject of a new $1 million documentary.
We've already pre-sold $600,000 of cassettes.
Swimsuit video sales at $19.95 a cassette could reach $15 million.
Another moneymaker, swimsuit calendars.
The grand total for the swimsuit issue, more than $32.5 million, or about one-third of SI's profit for all of last year.
-How many photographs do you suppose are taken?
-Are you ready?
90,000 slides?
-90,000.
-Approximately, yes.
-Is this going to be an annual event where you'll, in effect, put out an extra issue of the magazine- -I hope not.
--or is this only because of the work that's involved?
-Once you do that, you can't say, "Well, we're not doing it next year."
Oh, excuse me, how else--,?
We're accustomed to making all that money.
That made more money, that single issue, than Time Magazine made all year.
[dialing] [phone ringing] -[?]
-[crosstalk] Campbell.
-[?
[ header, tell me who's going to fire her?
I said, "Why would you fire her before her 25th anniversary?"
He said, Coast?
-What?
For Paulina.
Yes, I can't wait.
I'm in a real, real bind.
I can't do that anymore.
It's my people.
-I don't make that much money.
I have been offered so many jobs through the years.
I told Mark this when I used to ask him for raises.
Look at the money she's making for SI.
Why does she stay there unless she's making a lot of money?
-It's been very, very bad.
I know I'm the lowest paid senior editor there.
It's taken a lot out of my heart.
-She was such an important piece of that company's success.
It would have been nice to see her have some sort of interest in the business.
At those times, you didn't.
Even for my lingerie business, I didn't have an interest in the business either.
-I'm sure it was horrible for her.
All the politics involved in being a woman in a man's world, I couldn't have done it.
-Do you like a dominant man?
-What do you mean by dominant?
You mean bigger than me or just dominant up here?
-I got exclusive interviews with many of the models in this intimate setting, just a chance to chat with them.
-It was a bit of a zoo once it came out.
We had those big parties.
I'd always have to do tons of radio interviews, all those shock jocks and stuff.
They'd be so disgusting and sexist.
-Did you mean it when you wrote love and kisses on a poster to me?
-Why would you ask me such a thing?
They really didn't realize they were being offensive or whatever.
It was just the way the culture was.
-Do you feel comfortable fully dressed in a suit?
-Yes, I do.
-What is it that you look for?
-I look for intelligence, believe it or not, first, and naturalness, and how people project.
Those are three important things.
I look at figures, too.
-I would suspect.
This issue sells a multiple.
25 times or 40 times, what a normal issue on a newsstand sells.
I would suspect it is not intelligence, whatever is it that most people-- -Yes, it helps.
I'm sure you know this.
In front of the camera, if you have a beautiful face, but if she doesn't understand what you're trying to do, you're through shooting in an hour.
[somber music playing] -Are you bored?
-Bored?
No, I'm never bored.
I'm agitated lots of times because I can't do the things I used to do.
If I were a normal person again.
I don't feel like a normal person anymore.
I feel like a shell.
I'm very grateful I'm a shell.
I could be a piece of dust, too.
[chuckles] -Are you losing your memory?
Are you scared of that?
-No.
I think as you get older, you get more memory because there are a lot of things that were wonderful or horrible, but you never had the time to relive them.
Very often, I could sit there in my chair, and I'm alone, and I decide what I want to think about that day.
[birds chirping] -Oftentimes, beauty is dictated by the powers that be.
Historically, the powers that be had a lot of power to dictate what beauty was.
Beauty is true diversity.
-It took a lot of heat because in the early years, I didn't have any African-American models, and I had to fight that all the way.
Now I can talk about it, but it was very, very, very difficult.
-Jule always had Black girls, Spanish girls, all ethnicities.
I'm talking about the 60s, the 70s, and the 80s when this wasn't even spoken about.
By the way, back then, a brunette was something unusual.
We've come a really long way.
-I did not see myself as the all-American girl, but Jule did.
The fashion runways, similar-looking ladies like me were there.
That was acceptable, but Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue?
Come on.
-The response to having a natural Black woman in it is incredible.
-What do you mean natural?
-Meaning someone who, when you see me, you know that I'm a Black woman.
-Jule made me a standard of beauty, a woman that's considered desirable, inspirational.
You can aspire to be that.
-There's 10 people in the commercial, and you see nine Caucasian people and one ethnic person.
That's where you know you're only going to get one chance.
-I hated the picture, the first one.
Oh, my God, I hated it so bad.
I was in the Florida Keys.
I was leaning against some bushes or something in this one-piece swimsuit.
-Was that it?
-I did not like this picture.
What is wrong with me?
I like this picture now.
That is so interesting, right?
Maybe Jule wanted to preserve a little bit of young innocence or something.
I wanted to be like Paulina, like, oh, and wet in the water.
I think I didn't appreciate it.
Now, as an adult, I think it's very sweet.
No wonder my mama loved this picture.
-Jule wasn't the type of person who wanted to check a box.
She spent her time developing a concept.
Her vision was the blueprint for what we're seeing today as far as standards of beauty.
-She was pushing with Rushumba with natural hair.
40 years later, natural hair is having its moment.
She was doing it in the 80s when it was all about artifice and everything, and really celebrating Rushumba's natural beauty.
Right now, brands and society are forced to have diversity and inclusion in fashion because if they don't, they get called out.
MJ Day was doing it right before the power of social media, and Jule Campbell was doing it when it didn't exist.
I always say that if you don't see it, it's hard to dream it.
I hadn't seen black girls on the cover of huge magazines like the Sports Illustrated.
1996.
Dang, look at that.
-It was just howling there.
The wind was insane down there on the beaches.
I said, "Just start swirling around," and I started to have fun, and one image out of all those pictures worked.
-I feel like Jule was being political with this.
This is not just two girls on the sand in South Africa.
The apartheid had just ended.
This is her putting a Black girl and a White girl together in South Africa and saying, "What?
What?
What America?
What?"
She was a little bit of a gangster.
This is a gangster move right here.
-The moment this cover came out-- -Tyra, everybody in the center, please.
-Dude, that's Tyra.
Oh, my God, super hot.
Gave everybody permission to say that Black is beautiful, because it is beautiful, always has been.
I think there was something about being on the cover of this magazine that made say, "Yes, it's okay to acknowledge that."
Turn your head, take a look.
Yes, because it's just as beautiful as the White girl standing next door to you too.
The all-American girl can be black because she is.
-I can just remember Jule always trying to push the envelope.
I remember she would always ask me, "What are you going to do after modeling?"
-"Save your pennies."
Did she ever say that?
-Yes, save your pennies.
Save your pennies.
[crosstalk] -Thank you.
-Oh, my God.
Jule.
-Hello.
-Hi, Jules.
Guess who's on the phone.
It's Reshumba and Stacy, the Williams sisters.
-Oh, I love you, Jule.
How are you?
-I'm alive, honey.
[laughs] I'm good.
I'm pretty good.
-We were just talking about you and how much you loved us and made us feel beautiful and strong.
-You're making me cry.
I love you so much.
-I love you too, Jule.
-You were one of the only ones where I didn't feel like I had to diminish myself spiritually, physically, or intellectually.
-True.
-Thank you for your vision and looking forward and always wanting to diversify.
I understand now what you were trying to do then, and thank you.
-Right now, I'm crying.
I am so happy and proud of you.
Will I ever, ever see you again?
-Yes, you will.
-My dream is to put my arms around each of you.
I have a goal too.
You're my beautiful babies.
-We'll always be your babies forever.
-I need a minute.
-It's a big part of our lives for a lot of years.
[somber music playing] [crosstalk] -Wearing a swimsuit, I don't feel that diminishes me in any way.
What do you guys think about that?
-Yes, there is sex appeal, but you can be both.
I don't think that one should take away from the other.
-One man even said, "Well, you're posting it.
You're choosing to be sexualized."
I'm just like, "I am choosing to love my body and to be confident in who I am."
-Well, the Madonna whore thing is totally patriarchal.
[laughter] [crosstalk] Just reject it.
We can be sexual.
You don't get to sexualize us.
That's it.
-Exactly.
It's our choice.
It's our agency.
-They don't control what beauty is.
We do now.
There's a lot of backlash.
-They hate that.
-Yes.
They don't like it.
-It really throws them far.
They hate that they can't control what a beautiful person is.
-It needs to not be a thing.
If you want ad space, you must prove you are a brand creating change for women.
-We actively decided to not take anyone's business that wasn't supporting progress for women.
Yes, you're leaving money on the table, but we are creating content about women.
It's swimsuit content.
It's lifestyle content.
It's health and wellness content.
-I wrote an article for CNN called Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is a Step Back in Time and Not in a Good Way.
My work sometimes makes me a buzzkill, but you criticize something because you care.
What can be really empowering on an individual level can actually reinforce systems of oppression on a societal and macro level.
I don't doubt that the people who are in the magazine feel empowered, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's moving the needle on a systemic level if we are just reproducing the same idea with just different kinds of bodies and different kinds of people.
-What about women just wanting to feel and look sexy and share that?
-We live in a world in which the male gaze is the dominant gaze, sometimes the things that we think are sexy are actually impacted by what we've been told is sexy.
We feel sexy because this is what we have been taught sexy looks like.
What would it look like to take men out of the equation altogether?
What would the gaze look like then?
-I consider the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition to be for women.
If men want to enjoy and celebrate and take a look at it, awesome.
It's something that Jule actually set in motion long ago.
-This is what we are told is attractive, but the magazine itself does feel like a holdover from a previous century.
In a lot of ways, it's archaic.
-We've seen females in hijab.
We've seen females who identify as trans.
Is that good?
Sure.
It's expanding notions of femaleness, but it elevates their physicality over anything else.
-People always come up to me and say, "I know why you have that swimsuit issue.
It makes money."
Yes.
-The question is, why does it make money?
What does that tell us about American society that we really would prefer to see women in swimsuits, and when we see our female athletes, we'd prefer to see them in swimsuits?
-There's two ways that change really happens.
One is the idea that you blow the entire system up.
The other is attempts to change the system from within.
-The Jule era was coming to a close, and it had to come to a close.
I was leaving as editor at the end of 1996.
There was a new editor coming in.
Jule had a 30-year run of doing it.
It was time to change.
-I don't want to get into that discussion.
They treated her, and who did it and everything.
No, I don't want to get into that.
No.
-I was hired by Elaine.
Elaine quit six months after I was hired.
I worked for everyone except for Jule, and I was the assistant.
-They literally asked her to retire.
Those are the notes she wrote to defend her job.
-So far, the way I'm doing it seems to be working out pretty well.
It's my personality, my vision.
You can't train someone to be you.
It's so true.
You have to fight in many instances.
I can only imagine what it felt like to get to this point to have to write this list.
These hit home, but that's the industry, right?
They're done with you if they're done with you.
Is it a symptom of the place, or is it a symptom of the people that were there at the time?
I think it's symbolic for everything.
Why is all of this stuff so hotly contested at times?
It's because you fear the power that women possess when they feel the confidence to do what they want to do.
All these things are in place to stop us.
Why?
Because you're a certain age?
Then clearly your expiration date is up.
[somber music playing] -In the mid-'90s, SI does reader studies on the swimsuit issue.
The majority of readers say what they would like is more familiar swimsuit models in more provocative poses.
They don't care about the beautiful sunsets.
They just want to see models in less clothes.
-You know your worth.
We know your worth.
We think we've more than properly compensated you for your worth.
-They don't take into consideration that institutional knowledge and innate ability.
I would assume that the same thing will happen to me and the next person and the next person.
-She brought it to a place that was celebrated so lively.
-How did I find all this?
-[laughs loud] Good question.
You did a lot of stuff, lady.
[laughs] This is just one little shoot for yours.
-[exclaims] My goodness.
One of my babies.
-I am.
[Kisses Jule] -Look at you.
Are you happy, honey?
Life is good to you.
-Life is good to me.
-I like it, too, that you don't put a lot of makeup on because I think that makes you look younger.
You can study your face when you're alone and be comfortable using different faces.
-Yes, true.
-You learned that.
-You taught me that.
-No one taught you.
-When you look at this face, what do you see?
-Very alive picture.
-I see my fear.
I see my wanting to do a really good job and not quite sure of myself.
If I had learned to honor my body when I was this age, because I look back and I go, "Wow, this girl was phenomenal."
At the time, I never felt that.
My shoulders are too broad and my legs are too long and my breasts are too big and my head is too small.
-Cascades of hair.
I love it.
-Such an amazing woman.
-I wish you good things.
Do you have a good man in your life?
-[laughs loud] She's always interested in my personal life.
It's always been.
-I do that with everyone.
It makes me happy.
If I don't like them, I don't bother asking.
-I know.
I don't need to have a man to be happy.
-Then you've achieved something.
-Yes, and that is my truth.
-You will get happiness because you already have it in you.
-Exactly.
It's true.
-Do you like me preaching?
-I love you preaching.
You're not preaching, lady.
You're teaching.
-I've been there and back a lot.
It's good I'm not jealous.
-What would you be jealous of?
-You.
-No.
-You're amazing.
Seriously.
-You taught me.
-I see a great future ahead for you.
-Thank you.
You said that to me in-- -I do.
I'm not joking.
-You told me that in 1982.
-Wow.
Jule had a Polaroid camera.
She took Polaroids of everything.
She would use them to get a feeling for what the suit was going to be.
We would kind of pose it out with her.
-Maybe I can do something with them.
-Yes, you should do something with them.
-One, deux, trois.
-I wrote to you all these postcards.
It's amazing.
I'd forgotten about this.
-We have a very curious, loving family.
-Yes.
[laughter] -Oh, my God, I look like I died and came back.
-[laughs] -You look great.
-I can't get a copy of that.
-Okay.
-That's you and your brother.
-That's my mother.
-Is that your mother?
-Yes.
-No.
-Yes.
-How could I get that so mixed up?
-I'm his mama.
I'm Jill.
I'm Jill, the mother.
-No.
-I'm Jill, remember?
I'm Jill, that's Graham.
-Don't do all this to me [laughs].
-Okay.
All right.
Let's talk about something else.
-How can I think of anything else?
[somber music playing] -It's okay, Moomoo.
Don't worry.
It's okay.
-Okay.
-Don't feel bad.
-How long have we known each other?
-Let me see.
36 years.
-Oh, my God.
That would make you Bruce as your father?
-No, he's my ex-husband.
Bruce and I were married, remember?
-We'll talk about that another time.
-Yes.
-It's just too much has come down that I'm too organized, and I don't have it in its own place.
-Okay.
That's okay.
[somber music playing] -[chuckles] Thank you- -Yay.
--everybody.
-Make a wish.
-[laughs softly] -You look ridiculous, [laughs].
Okay.
The fire is going down on this candle.
-This is my daughter.
Just a minute.
Give me a minute.
There's so many wishes.
I can only do one.
[piano playing] -What's your toast?
Here's to you.
-Here's to me.
-I hope we never disagree.
-If we do, to hell with you.
Here's to me.
-[laughs] -It's my favorite toast because it brings a smile to your face.
You guys made this a very special day.
Always loved it coming down in the morning and finding all the glasses and stuff on the table.
Your last drinks.
I think we'll do the same thing.
[chuckles] [piano playing] -Here's to you, and here's to me.
I hope we never disagree but if we do, to hell with you.
Here's to me, but I do love you.
[piano playing] [instrumental playing]
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