Kate Upton for Christmas

I want Kate Upton for Christmas. Not the idea of her, not her career or brand—just her, whatever that means. I know how that sounds. Crude, obviously impossible, missing the point of Christmas, all of that. But at least I’m saying what I actually want instead of lying about wanting a PlayStation while thinking about something else.

That Sports Illustrated video from her first shoot probably started it. 2011 maybe, her rookie moment. She’s laughing about something off camera, moving around with zero self-consciousness, no idea what she’s doing to people. There’s a realness to it that’s hard to describe without sounding stupid—the laughter, the movement, none of it performed. You can believe in it for the three minutes the video runs.

Everyone’s Christmas list is the sanitized version of desire. Gadgets, clothes, status objects. World peace if they’re feeling noble. But it’s all the same impulse underneath: you want something that makes you feel something, and you dress it up in the respectable version. I just skipped the dressing up.

The video made its rounds online. She became what she was always going to become—famous, processed, turned into content. That specific moment, the one that grabbed me, got buried under a thousand other moments. The machine took over. She became a brand and that laughter became a product.

I never got my Christmas wish. Which is fine. Most people don’t. At least I asked for what I actually wanted.