For the past couple of weeks they have been the subject of a debate and controversy that has dominated America's sports pages. The baseball season may be headed into its stretch run, the National Football League opened play last weekend, and the Sydney Games are almost upon us, but all anybody seems to want to talk about is Jenny Thompson's breasts.

I should point out right now that I haven't actually seen them.

Neither have any of Sports Illustrated's readers, although legions of them appear to have become exercised about the matter. As far as I can determine, the only ones who have seen Jenny's boobs are Heinz Kluetmeier, the veteran photographer who took the picture in question, and Jenny Thompson's boyfriend, who was there when Kluetmeier shot it.

Three weeks ago, just before the US Olympic swimming trials, Thompson surprised everyone by appearing in her bathing suit, sans top, in a colour photograph in the pages of America's premier sports magazine. The photograph depicts her confidently smiling at the camera. Her breasts are modestly covered by her clenched fists, and if anything, the pose suggests pugnacious challenge, as Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly noted a few weeks later, something along the lines of "Want to wrestle? I'll win."

The publication of Thompson's topless photograph resulted, predictably, in the usual scores of subscription cancellations, and both Thompson and the magazine have been under attack since from a bizarre coalition of the Christian right and the neo-feminists, the former describing the shot as "soft-core pornography" and the latter categorising it as "exploitative" of women.

It should be noted here that Jenny Thompson hardly qualifies as a bimbo. She is 27, a Stanford graduate from Massachusetts and owns five Olympic Gold Medals. (All of them in swimming relay events; she will be looking to add to her collection this month in Australia.) She has already been accepted to Columbia University's medical school, and plans to be doctor once her competitive career has ended.

Ironically, in the photograph in question, Thompson is wearing patriotic-looking red, white, and blue swimsuit bottoms and a pair of bright red boots. In other words, her outfit virtually duplicates what the roly-poly sideshow heavyweight Eric (Butterbean) Esch wears into the ring every time he fights.

You want to talk obscene? I'll flat-out guarantee you this much: Butterbean's boobs are a lot bigger than Jenny's.

Moreover, as Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins pointed out in a courageous defence of Thompson, even though it appeared in a magazine which publishes an annual nipple-fest with each February's laughably-entitled Swimsuit Issue, "the photograph is utterly harmless - there is not a single, actual, verifiable nipple in sight.

"The self-appointed moralists and feminist guardians completely miss the point, and misread the photograph," said Jenkins. "The picture isn't offensive. It may even be an important image for this reason: Thompson isn't showing off her breasts. She is showing off her muscles. It's a crucial distinction."

In fact - and again, since we can't see them, this would be purely conjecture - Thompson's boobs would appear to be among her least-developed features. That each of them can be concealed by a small fist suggests that she is probably not a Playboy centerfold candidate.

Since the publication of the photograph, some of the nation's top sports columnists have been ready to rip one another's throats out. Jenkins and Reilly vigorously defended Thompson's pose. Linda Robertson of the Miami Herald not only wants to send Thompson to her room, but wants to send Jenkins and Reilly with her. George Vecsey of the New York Times also addressed the subject last Sunday, but couldn't seem to make up his own mind about where he stood.

"I read every word of the excellent article, liked Thompson a lot, and enjoyed the photo of her confidence, her muscles, her posture, her athleticism," wrote Vecsey. "Anybody who says her pose was not partly about sex is being hypocritical, but then again, so am I, because I looked more than once before I asked `Gee, I wonder if she should be doing this'?"

"Wow," wrote Reilly. "Jenny Thompson has a nice pair, doesn't she? Massive. Firm. Perfectly shaped. "Her thighs, I mean.

"Too bad she took the top off and put the boots on," complained Robertson in the Miami Herald, "because the muscles are secondary to the covered breasts. The strategically placed hands and the incongruous footwear distract from the magnificent muscles. Sadly, Thompson's confident smile barely gets noticed."

"Thompson," opined Robertson, "looks as silly and as exploited as the Miss America contestants who parade around in swimsuits and high heels with fake smiles."

Donna LoPiano, the president of the Women's Sports Foundation, complained in a letter Jenkins forwarded to me that "Sports Illustrated seldom covers women for their athletic exploits and frequently portrays women as sex objects rather than athletes," coverage LoPiano deemed "objectionable and demeaning to female athletes."

Interestingly, both Robertson and LoPiano (Jenkins collectively describes them as the "Old Girl Network," while Reilly calls them "grumpy women" who "have their girdles in a wad") pointedly suggest that the Sports Illustrated pose depicts the partially-clad swimmer's "genitalia" - even though 14 years ago another group of feminists, this one seeking the right to bathe topless at a local beach, went to court and won a hard-fought battle when an Appeals Court judge ruled that breasts do NOT constitute genitalia.

And again, what's the big deal? You can't see them anyway. "It's not a sexual picture at all," Kluetmeier, the photographer, told Sally Jenkins. "It was not about taking her clothes off. She's the perfect Olympian, and the Greeks and the Romans would have fought to sculpt her. People who interpret it any other way have an agenda."

Thompson herself seems surprised by the furore all of this has generated.

"I wasn't naked," she recalled before departing for Australia this week. "I was fully covered, and I don't see anything wrong with what I did.

"It was an expression and a celebration of strength and the beauty of muscles. It was more about, `look at how strong my body is,' and not `look at me, I'm a sex symbol or sex object'," Thompson said. "I wasn't giving a seductive look in the pose. It was more `Here I am, this is me, and I'm going to the Olympics'."

Fittingly, the last word on the subject should go to the subject's Mom. The response of Jenny Thompson's mother Margrid to the controversy?

"I think everyone should lighten up."