By Paul Salfen for AMFM Magazine
For decades, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue was either celebrated as pop-culture royalty or vilified as the ultimate symbol of the male gaze. Few people bothered to ask the woman who actually created it what she thought it was about. In Beyond the Gaze, director Jill Campbell (Jule Campbell’s daughter-in-law) finally hands the microphone to the pioneering editor herself—at age 95—along with the supermodels she discovered and the industry that both attacked and adored her.
In an exclusive conversation with AMFM Magazine ahead of the film’s wider release, Jill Campbell and legendary supermodel Roshumba Williams sat down to discuss the making of the documentary, the misconceptions that haunted Jule for 32 years, and why this story still matters in 2025.
“This isn’t a vanity project,” Jill emphasizes. “We digitized over 10,000 photographs, unearthed never-before-seen Super 8 footage, and really dug into the controversy. We wanted every side represented—because Jule deserved that fairness.”
The controversy was fierce. When the first standalone Swimsuit Issue dropped in 1964, feminist protesters picketed newsstands. Critics accused the magazine—and its female editor—of exploiting women for male consumption. Jule, a fashion editor who saw herself as an artist curating beauty the way a filmmaker curates a scene, was stunned.
“She was a woman hiring women, directing women, celebrating women,” Roshumba says. “Yet somehow putting a woman in a bathing suit inside a sports magazine was seen as the ultimate betrayal. Jule never understood that. She was just trying to make something beautiful.”
Beautiful—and profitable. Under Jule Campbell’s vision, the Swimsuit Issue became the most lucrative single magazine edition in publishing history. More importantly, she used that platform to shatter the era’s cookie-cutter beauty standards long before “inclusivity” became a buzzword. She fought to put women of color on the cover when the industry insisted the “girl next door” had to be blonde and blue-eyed. She discovered or helped launch Tyra Banks, Christie Brinkley, Elle Macpherson, Kathy Ireland, Paulina Porizkova, Cheryl Tiegs, Stacey Williams, Carol Alt, Kim Alexis… and Roshumba herself.
“She saw something in me when I was this dark-skinned girl with short natural hair,” Roshumba remembers. “That wasn’t the standard in the ’80s and early ’90s. Jule didn’t care. She wanted different kinds of beauty.”
The film doesn’t shy away from the harder truths either—Jule’s decades spent away from her family, the guilt of juggling motherhood with an all-consuming career, the personal cost of being a trailblazer in an era that wasn’t always kind to women who refused to choose.
“What I love is that Jill included that struggle,” Roshumba says. “Because every woman in those pages was a mother, a daughter, a human being trying to figure it out. Jule did it with grace, with art, and with an unwavering belief that beauty could be empowering if it was done right.”
For Jill Campbell the director, making the film was its own Hail Mary pass. After years of scraping together indie funding, a single bold phone call to producer (and former Ford model) Sharon Shuter during the pandemic turned into full financing. “I threw the Hail Mary and she caught it,” Jill laughs. “Suddenly I could make the movie I always dreamed of making.”
Roshumba’s own recent Hail Mary? A 5 a.m. voicemail last year telling her to get from Los Angeles to Miami—immediately—for the 60th anniversary cover shoot. She made the flight with no ticket booked and no luggage, just pure determination… and ended up on the cover.
As the credits roll on Beyond the Gaze, one line from Jule lingers: “Don’t judge a magazine purely by its cover.” It’s a plea and a challenge. Dig deeper, the film insists, and you’ll find a complicated, triumphant story about a woman who changed culture while raising a family, shattering ceilings, and proving that empowerment and a perfect photograph are not mutually exclusive.
In 2025, when body positivity and personal agency dominate the conversation, Jule Campbell’s legacy feels more relevant than ever. Beyond the Gaze isn’t just the origin story of an iconic franchise—it’s the origin story of a certain kind of fearless femininity we’re still catching up to.
Beyond the Gaze, directed by Jill Campbell and featuring Roshumba Williams, Tyra Banks, Christie Brinkley, Elle Macpherson, Paulina Porizkova, Cheryl Tiegs, Kathy Ireland, Carol Alt, Kim Alexis, Stacey Williams, MJ Day, and the indelible Jule Campbell herself, is now available. Prepare to see the Swimsuit Issue—and the woman who built it—in an entirely new light.
