After helping the U.S. women’s rugby team secure its first bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Ilona Maher flew straight to New York for her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover photo shoot.
ilona
Photography BEN WATTS Words LIZ PLANK
SEPTEMBER ISSUE ‘24
Swimsuit by Eres
Swimsuit by Myra Swim
“How do you like your coffee?” Ilona Maher asks me on the set of her own Swimsuit Issue cover shoot. With a 4:15 a.m. call time, she could have easily asked for an elaborate warm drink to be delivered to her door. But instead, she’s pouring herself a filter coffee in a paper cup and kindly asks if I want one, too. When she hands me my drink, I lean in to ask her what it’s like to be one of the famous athletes on Earth, but she gets up again, this time collecting some of the crew’s garbage. I can’t decide if I'm in the presence of Serena Williams or Princess Diana, but what I do know is that trying to slot Ilona Maher into any category is a futile endeavor.
Swimsuit by Haus of Pink Lemonaid
Swimsuit by Mare Perpetua
Maher has always been a legend, but she’s been extra legendary of late. Since she led the U.S. women’s rugby team to its first bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, she’s received countless messages, endorsements, offers for representation and what seems like an unrelenting cascade of requests. During her swimsuit fitting, her agent, Rheann Engelke, turns to me and says she’s been having trouble meeting the demand. “There’s so much is coming in for her right now,” she sighs, equal parts exhilarated and exhausted. “If I step away for more than 10 minutes, I come back to so many emails.” Though Maher blew up during the Olympics Games, boosting her combined social following by 300% in just a matter of weeks– she’s anything but an overnight success. At 17, with the encouragement of her father —who was also a rugby player—she took up the sport and quickly became the top college rugby player in the country. She ascended to the grand stage at the 2022 Rugby World Cup Sevens and the Tokyo Olympics, where she went viral for her signature red lipstick and her corky behind-the-scenes TikToks about the infamous “anti-sex” cardboard beds. She’s now become the most followed rugby player in the world on Instagram, surpassing any man in her sport. With more than six million followers across social platforms where she posts almost daily, she’s basically governing a small country, while also being a full-time, Olympic-level athlete.
Swimsuit by Norma Kamali
One thing about Maher is that she is never not working. While it’s partly due to her unyielding work ethic, it's also a result of navigating the patriarchal society she's forced to endure. As a female athlete, she doesn’t have the luxury to step back and unwind when the game clock stops. While many male rugby players have one job, most of their female counterparts need two. All sports have a gender gap, but rugby stands as one of the most egregious offenders of it. Even with her level of fame, Maher wouldn’t be able to afford rent without supplementing her income with sponsorships. And she’s not alone. Research shows that women in sports need endorsement deals twice as much as men do, and yet they’re less likely to receive them.
“[Men] get to play rugby and they get paid millions of dollars while we make minimum wage and this won't be a career for us,” Maher says. “I have teammates going into the workforce now, whereas these guys are down there and rugby's it [for them].” And even once female athletes overcome those obstacles and pull off sponsorships, they get criticized for it. Maher tells me that she’ll often be knocked for not being serious enough about her sport because she’s doing a lipstick campaign, because makeup is seen as less legitimate than the products that male athletes are associated with. In other words, female rugby players have to tackle just as hard as men, but do it in heels, backward.
Maher also deals with a firehose of degrading comments about her body. They mostly seem to come from feeble men who are triggered by a female body that could arm wrestle them to the ground. She tells me that the comments don’t faze her, but that she worries what they do to the women and girls who get a glimpse of them. That’s why Maher doesn't hesitate to roast her haters. In one viral TikTok she posted in July, she responds to one of her detractors who calculated her BMI to imply she’s unfit. “I do have a BMI of 30. Well, 29.3 to be more exact," she begins with a smirk. "I am considered overweight. But alas, I’m going to the Olympics, and you’re not."
Swimsuit by Norma Kamali
Clockwise from top left: Swimsuit by ALAÏA, Mare Perpetua, Monday Swimwear
Her love for her sport is palpable because in rugby she didn’t just find a career — she found herself.
While she’s frustrated, Maher isn’t deterred. Her love for her sport is palpable because in rugby she didn’t just find a career—she found herself. Maher credits the sport for helping her fall in love with her body and see it for what it could achieve, rather than just how it was perceived. She struggled with accepting herself as a tall girl with broad shoulders and a muscular build.
“I was always like, you know, called masculine or whatever,” she says. “But I never felt that way. But I don't think you're going to bully the girl who could probably beat you up in a rage. I love that [rugby] showed me what I can do. It showed me how capable my body is and it's not just like a tool to be looked at and objectified.”
As I watch Maher embody elegance in a delicate, barely-there ensemble exuding Naomi Campbell-level confidence, I'm stunned to learn that as a little girl, she shied away from the camera. “Every kid has one thing, hers was just not wanting to be in photos,” Maher's younger sister Adrianna tells me as we walk to the next location. When I catch up with our cover girl, she admits that her lack of confidence was tied to her size explaining, “I was a big girl growing up so I didn’t love being in pictures.” Her older sister and manager Olivia Maher (yes, the very genius mind behind “girl dinner”) reveals a similar story when we chat over the phone. “To be this confident she had to go through hard things," she says. “She went years feeling shy and not beautiful.”
Swimsuit by Norma Kamali
But when I try to dig deeper into her past trauma or insecurities, Ilona doesn’t tag along. She’s vulnerable, but she’s not a victim. She talks openly about her struggles with body image, but she doesn’t build a house there. There’s something refreshing about the way she embraces her body. She talks about her struggles with self-acceptance as casually as she would discuss improving the speed of her kick or break down the strategy behind a flawless lineout. It’s surgical, it’s uncomplicated and it’s refreshingly not that deep.
While we can make the issue of women loving themselves feel like an insurmountable task that requires centuries of deep self-work, for Maher, it seems miraculously straightforward. She doesn’t dwell on what men say about her on the internet, because her existence in itself is an act of defiance to the patriarchal programming that they’re trapped in. And besides, her athletic prowess alone invalidates any of their baseless claims about her weight. “If my cellulite was lower in that perfect range, I wouldn't be doing what I could do,” she says, “I wouldn't be that powerful for it [so] I just really think sports have been so helpful.”
In truth, it feels strange to even acknowledge these misogynistic comments because they feel so removed from the undeniable evidence standing right in front of me. Maher is ethereal and stunning. When she walks into a room, all eyes naturally gravitate toward her. Throughout our time together, I actually have to stop myself from staring at her. Whether it’s her piercing green eyes or her olive skin, it’s giving sentient caramel. With a jawline and cheekbones that seem like they could cut through steel, she gives a Roman statue a run for her money. On set, I watch everyone slowly lose their minds. “I’m drooling,” Sports Illustrated Swimsuit editor in chief MJ Day confesses to me a few hours in. “I’m unwell.” And while it feels odd to objectify a woman with so many more important accomplishments under her belt, it feels necessary given the distorted perceptions that a small yet vocal minority of men project about Maher online.
SEPTEMBER ISSUE ‘24
When I ask Maher about the future, it seems like she’s still trying to wrap her head around the present. She’s got many exciting secret projects that she can’t tell me about, but she mentions more than once just how daunting fame is to her. She frets being called a role model or being put on a pedestal only to disappoint her fans when they find out she’s not perfect. “I just try to really stress like I am human,” she explains. “But I think I do really care a lot. And I do want people to like me.” Her apprehension is understandable. I mean, if you had just just made six million new friends, wouldn’t you be worried about losing them too?
Swimsuit by Eres, Necklace is custom by Brent Neale
But one thing is certain: she handles the spotlight that she’s earned with great care and she’s intent on making a meaningful impact. When I bring up the upcoming presidential election, her demeanor shifts; the playful, lighthearted tone she’s displayed so far gives way to a more serious, contemplative one.
“I think it's going to be cool because there is an opportunity to have female representation and to change this country in a way that I think will benefit us,” she says. “Was that a Kamala Harris endorsement?” I ask, uncertain if she’s ready to make it official. “That’s a Kamala Harris endorsement,” she replies with a coy smile. Maher cites issues like abortion rights and contraception as key concerns for her. But her approach to politics mirrors her approach to everything else: It’s never about her, but rather the women and girls who look up to her. “I have enough money that if I didn't need an abortion, I could raise a baby myself,” she says. “If I wanted to get abortion, I could do that. So I have that privilege [but] it scares me about the other girls. I have options and I want to remember that, my followers don't all have that. And so it's like for me, but also mostly for them.”
Swimsuit by Mare Perpetua
Maher is humble to her core, so she’d never admit this, but she shares some commonalities with a potential first female president. It’s hard to think of two bigger male institutions than rugby and politics. Yet, here stand Maher and Harris, whose undeniable popularity completely dismantles the very outdated sexist notions that tried to shut them out of those fields in the first place. Maher is part of a seismic shift when it comes to growing female representation in the most traditionally masculine realms of society. Her rise to fame transcends rugby or her personal journey; it symbolizes a movement where women no longer wait for a seat at the table because they can craft a new one instead.
It’s a lot of pressure to be the first female anything, but Maher is determined to have fun doing it. The night before her big photo shoot, she indulges in lobster claws and downs a couple dirty martinis while she dishes about her favorite romantic comedies. Between shots on location, she snacks on a bag of Doritos while scrolling Instagram. And when she gets a glance of the first few photos of herself, clearly pleased with how they turned out, she quips that this cover better get her a boyfriend.
Maher is living proof that you can be a revolutionary athlete, a feminist trailblazer and still, sometimes, revel in the simple joy of getting to be a woman.
Photographer Ben Watts Hair Sam Leonardi Makeup Jodie Boland Production Cindi Blair Productions Location Bellport NY
Art Direction Worktable NYC
ILONA MAHER
model page
@ILONA MAHER
INSTAGRAM
ILONA MAHER
GALLERY
ILONA MAHER
model page
@ILONA MAHER
INSTAGRAM
ILONA MAHER
GALLERY
ILONA MAHER
model page
@ILONA MAHER
INSTAGRAM
ILONA MAHER
GALLERY
ILONA MAHER
GALLERY
ILONA MAHER
MODEL PAGE
ILONA MAHER
Videos
While we can make the issue of women loving themselves feel like an insurmountable task that requires centuries of deep self-work, for Maher, it seems miraculously straightforward.
Bottoms by Miu Miu, Jacket by Miu Miu.
Swimsuit by Ralph Lauren
SEPTEMBER ISSUE ‘24
SEPTEMBER ISSUE ‘24
SEPTEMBER ISSUE ‘24