Swimming Not to Cambodia

Kate Upton, this year’s Sport Illustrated Swim Suit issue cover girl is no Anna Magnani. To begin with she is blond rather than dark and she lacks the hair in her armpits that was one of the things that made Open City’s neorealism complete. But she's a giant step away away from the anorexic and pedophilic Brazilian waxed babes that fashion mags stuff down our throats as if we were goose livers being turned into fois gras (although the actual question of whether she is Brazilian waxed or not has not as yet been reported in the press). Yes like Arab spring a popular uprising has occurred due to social networking and this grass roots rebellion has produced Kate Upton. Listen to the Times’ Guy Trebay "waxing" about the phenomenon (“Model Struts Path to Stardom Not on Runway, but on You Tube,” NYT, 2/13/12), “it is increasingly difficult for the industry to ignore the world outside the Fashion Week tents, particularly the one that is virtual.”  Whatever fashionistas may think, deconstructionists should delight in Trebay’s locution which delivers the unmistakable connotation that the ideal will be replaced with the unreal. In his piece he describes how Ivan Bart of IMG Models, “the company behind the multimillion-dollar careers of woman like Gisele Bundchen” came to respond to a woman who came “from obscurity to No. 2 on a list of the world’s 99 ‘top’ women compiled by AskMen.com, an online magazine with 15 million readers.” “ ‘Kate is bigger than fashion,” Trebay quotes Bart as saying. "‘She’s the Jayne Mansfield of the Internet.’” Kate may have something in common with Barbie but she’s got her “Christian Louboutin stilettos” planted firmly in the air.