The Most Famous Thing About You

Kate Upton told The Sun she wishes she had smaller breasts. Every day I wish I had smaller boobs, she said—explaining that she can’t go out in spaghetti tops without a bra, can’t buy the tiny bikinis she actually wants to wear. If only they were like earrings, then I could wear them whenever I wanted.

There’s something genuinely sad about that, and also something completely predictable. Her chest made her famous—the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit covers, the Terry Richardson shoots, the whole machinery of a very specific kind of attention—and now she’s stuck living inside the feature that got her there. The thing that opens the door becomes the thing you can never walk away from. It’s basically the arc of anyone who got famous for one specific physical attribute. The audience picks its version and doesn’t much care about the person’s preferences.

I’m not going to pretend I didn’t notice Kate Upton’s body before I noticed anything else about her. That would be dishonest. But there’s something uncomfortable about the gap between what made her a celebrity and what she apparently wants to be. She wants to be the woman who steps out on a warm night in a spaghetti top and nobody says a word. Instead she’s the girl in the bounce video. The internet picked its version and locked the door behind her.