If you’re a male and have a computer, you’ve probably watched the video of bikini model Kate Upton’s Sports Illustrated* shoot – taken in an aeroplane while entering zero gravity – already.
If you haven’t, you should. In short, it features Upton in a skimpy gold bikini, floating around, tressed blonde hair going around, looking really fucking hot. As you would predict, the video has been very popular, or in internet-speak, it has gone viral.
Once you move past the stage of heightened arousal, you’ll see there’s a weird message about body image implicit in this shoot. Quelle fucking surprise I hear you say (shout out to TPA’s readers in France – for everyone else, I think it means ‘what a surprise’). All fashion reinforces unsustainable stereotypes about the human body. Well, that’s true.
But in this case there’s an even more unnatural message behind this video.
Kate Upton is hot, and unlike many bikini models she has real breasts. While models with fake breasts (i.e. silicon implants, otherwise colloquially known as bolt-ons) generally don’t have issues with the gravitational force exerted on their breasts, for “natural models” this is more of a concern.
So the fashion people decide to send Kate Upton and her real boobs up into zero gravity, where they presumably won’t have to deal with Newton’s theory. And it works because her boobs don’t sag. The message behind this? If you have real breasts, the only place you’re attractive is space, where you don’t have to deal with gravity. Only fake titties may be photographed on earth, where they will remain high on the chest.
I guess the take home message here is that the fashion world is pretty twisted, and that isn’t really newsworthy. Dog bites man, and all that shit. I don’t really know what I am talking about. This is a sports blog for fuck’s sake, not a undergraduate essay on gender studies. Just fucking enjoy the video. It’s pretty cool.
By Ben Shine
*Loose justification for posting this article on a sports blog.