Valid point on Kristi and the Nordica posters, but if I do recall in an article she actually stated that she didn't like the first poster when she saw it, because it had been altered and probably also because of how it portrayed her. But that seems to be how Nordica, not Kristi chose to do her ads.
Skiing is totally a male dominated sport, although these girls have all brought alot more recognition to the female aspect, I'm sure that 95% of Freeskiers readers are male. And how many times have all the guys on here posted something in regards to 'who's the hottest girl in skiing' and I'm sure every member of this site, whether male or female checked it out. Sure there was a few skimpy pictures of the girls in the mag, but look at it this way, sex sells regardless of how you look at it, personally when I looked through the magazine the last thing I thought about was whether or not they were being degraded, I just read about their accomplishments, checked out the pics and left it at that. Sarah is known to compete alongside the guys and hold her own. She fights so hard for the opportunity to compete with the guys when a girls division doesn't exist at a comp. These are the girls who give it their all and are paving the way and bringing recognition to all up and coming females in the sport. So rather then be offended ladies look at it as an accomplishment that there was two phenomenal female skiers on the front of a magazine that targets extreme athletes.
Yah so you can totally say that sex sells, and they showed a sexy aspect of each of the skiers, but think about the majority of time all of these ladies spend in ski gear, training and being one of the guys and then think, not only did they get to be portrayed as skiers who rip, they also got to be portrayed as sexy female athletes, which is different from the stereotypical tomboy etc....
My Life's a Joke...