Yahoo Lifestyle Podcaster Brianna LaPaglia Covers Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue With a Message of Empowerment: ‘It’s Me Reclaiming Who I Am as a Woman’
Podcaster Brianna LaPaglia, better known online as Brianna Chickenfry, is Sports Illustrated Swimsuit’s latest cover model. Fronting the January digital issue, the Barstool Sports personality was photographed by Katherine Goguen in La Quinta, Calif.
“This cover is me being me again and taking control of my life,” LaPaglia told the magazine. “This is my body; my body isn’t that experience, and even though I’m not 100 percent in it right now, this is me. This doesn’t have anything to do with anybody else.”
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On the cover, LaPaglia models a bronze bikini by Isa Boulder, a Bali-based sustainable label known for its knitted designs.
In her interview with Sports Illustrated, LaPaglia discussed regaining confidence after a breakup. “I’m finding that little spark of life back in myself now that one person that felt like a doom cloud over me at all times is gone,” she explained.
The influencer recently got out of a relationship with country singer Zach Bryan, who she dated for just over a year. LaPaglia had previously turned down modeling for Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue at his request.
“It is just, on a petty level, my favorite f–k you,” LaPaglia said of landing the photo shoot. “This is me, and I wanted to do this, and now I’m on the digital cover.”
The “BFFs” cohost also said she’s “very grateful” for becoming a Taylor Swift fan in the wake of her split with Bryan.
“Now I’m not just listening to pop music, I’m listening to the diary of someone who experienced something completely the same as me, and they’re putting it in words that I could have never done myself,” LaPaglia said of Swift’s music.
“Her words have been, in a weird way, an outlet of getting my own words out in my mind. I can listen to it and be like, ‘Wow, how the hell does she have a song for everything?’ For what I’m going through now, there’s a song, there’s an era, there’s something for everything in Taylor Swift’s music,” she added.
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