Built On It

There’s something about celebrity complaints that hits different when it’s about the very thing that made them a celebrity in the first place. Kate Upton hates her breasts. That’s the news. Every day she wishes they were smaller. She can’t wear the clothes she wants. Can’t go outside without people staring, talking about them, reducing her to this one physical fact.

Which, fine, that’s a real complaint. Body is a body. Being unable to wear a simple tank top because of how you’re built sounds legitimately frustrating. I’m not going to sit here and tell her she should be grateful for the attention or the money or the career that came with it.

But there’s this dark thing where the very quality that made her famous is the thing she hates most about herself. She got everything and the cost is she can’t be comfortable in her own skin. Can’t own what owns her. I don’t know if that’s irony or tragedy or just how it goes when the world decides what your value is and you have to live inside that for the rest of your life.

The interview happened. The quote exists. And now she’s the woman who famously hates the thing she’s famous for, which is its own special kind of prison.