Has Kate Upton revived something long thought dead? In this age of Internet instant gratification and youXXX is the Supermodel back? This is a revival on a Jurassic Park scale. No one would have thought this possible but just like when Bieber used the Internets to recreate the male teenage singer, also thought dead after Michael Jackson grew up, so Kate has rebirthed the Supermodel.
A lot of people have been pretending to be Supermodels, like Tom Brady’s Yoko wife, Gisele Bundchen and the other stars of Victoria Secret lingerie parade. Most ended up as fodder tossed out of Leonardo Dicaprio’s or George Clooney’s bedroom. Heidi Klum tried to rise to the top with her Halloween shenanigans and strange marriage to Seal (now divorced.) But they never had “it”. Either too skinny, too foreign, or too lacking in synapse firing skills none of these models rose to the top. They never broke out of their Vogue monologue and hit the mainstream.
Without Supermodels we have been filling in with reality stars – Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton; actresses – Scarlett Johansson or Megan Fox and failed actresses – Lindsay Lohan. We have also absorbed the strange hybrids full of the crazy – Tila Tequila I am looking at you here. But models? No.
Even Upton’s rise to fame was all rated PG. Paris and Kim had to resort to underground sex tapes. Kate? She made a tape all right. A tape of her doing the dougie at a clippers game. This endearing 5 minutes was not the reason in and of itself of her rise, as I doubt you or me doing the same thing would result in a modeling contract, but it was a huge catalyst in an oversaturated media driven world that allowed her cream to rise.
It was assumed porn stars had destroyed the youthful almost innocence associated with Super Models. Sport Illustrated? Really? Is Maxim magazine still even published? The days of a Kristy Brinkley poster hanging in some young male’s room of yesteryear were assumed to be supplanted by a flush of porn sites running the gamut of every possible taste imaginable.
Perhaps it was this overabundance of pornography (and the freeness of it that is destroying the porn industry) that left the door open for a fresh face from Michigan via Melborne to save the popular modeling industry. Since cash left the porn industry are there even real porn stars anymore? Who is left to spend $25 dollars on one DVD? And it is not like you want Blu Ray porn.
The evidence is piling up of her Super Modelness. Consider this ad. Is it something only a Supermodel could make? (Or a reality star in her prime which we used to replaced Supermodels. Nitpicker.)
http://www.longislandpress.com/2012/02/28/kate-upton-carls-jr-commercial-video/ (SNSFW) This is quite reminiscent of Cindy Crawford hocking Pepsi products back in the 90’s, a true demonstration of her SuperModel power. We haven’t seen the like since, at least not by anyone calling themselves models.
Is this a flash in the pan, a Jump Jive An’ Wail, moment or do we have a real rebirth? Has she made case that she made the leap and that she is a Supermodel? The upcoming days will tell. No matter what though, it is exciting to see something so old being something so new.