Kate Upton on a Beach, Obviously

In 2012, Kate Upton was the kind of presence that stopped conversations mid-sentence. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover had happened. The Cat Daddy video had gone viral in the specific way that gets people fired for watching it at their desks. And now there were beach shoot outtakes—the slightly less produced, marginally more candid version of something already engineered to eliminate independent thought. I had no objections. Nobody did.