Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Rookie Melissa Wood-Tepperberg Is A 40-Year-Old Mom & Yoga Pro

It's the time of year when Sports Illustrated starts introducing us to the swimsuit issue rookies who will have their dreams come true when airport magazine racks start featuring their bikini photos.

SI really went outside the box for its 2023 issue when it called up 40-year-old mom Melissa Wood-Tepperberg, whose husband is the CEO of the Tao restaurant group. Hint: It's where really rich people eat food.

Melissa is considered a "lifestyle influencer" who gained a huge following during COVID with her Pilates and yoga workouts. Now here she is in 2023 with the pandemic long over with and it's time to show off all the results from all that work Melissa put in on the mat.

Let's go to Dominica to see Melissa's shoot:

“Since I was a teenager I remember flipping through the pages of SI and feeling such strength, beauty and empowerment,” Wood-Tepperberg wrote this week on Instagram. “Never in my life did I ever think that at the age of 40 and being a mother of two that I would now be in SI.”

Ladies, we have to stop normalizing this thought process that you cannot be in Sports Illustrated at 40 after a couple of kids. Elizabeth Hurley is 57 and has a 20-year-old son and that queen should be on the cover of SI. Salma Hayek is 56, has a daughter, and could team up with Hurley to set all sorts of modern-day Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue sales records.

And while Melissa is quite humble about her inclusion in the 2023 edition, according to the NY Post, we're talking about a woman who is sitting on a yoga empire of 100,000 subscribers who pay $9.99 for access to her classes that she can perform at home.

Some quick math here: 100,000 X $9.99/mo. is a whopping $999,000.

Let's multiply that out by 12 and we come to a figure of...$11,988,000 a year from teaching yoga!

That's absolutely beautiful and damn near makes me want to cry over the power of subscriptions and demand for a specific product. Also, Melissa started her yoga business using a tripod she bought off Amazon.

Well done, Melissa. That's inspiring stuff for a man or woman. Rich or poor.

Needless to say, it's a really, really good time to be yoga mom Melissa Wood-Tepperberg. Enjoy your year. Your earned it.