There was a controversy last week that we didn’t cover. I can’t speak for why CB and Bedhead didn’t discuss it (we didn’t talk amongst ourselves on this one, oddly enough), but I chose not to cover it because A) I didn’t want to give pro-anorexia (“pro-ana”) sites the added publicity and B) I honestly thought it was such a dumb controversy and I couldn’t work up the energy to discuss it. Kate Upton, 19, is having a great year – she scored the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition, she just got the cover of GQ, she’s getting lots and lots of modeling gigs, and she’s getting a lot of criticism from prissy high-fashion types. You know you’re getting somewhere when the prissy fashion people are mad. But I don’t think Kate Upton was expecting to become the victim of one of the nastiest, craziest online diatribes I’ve ever seen.

The site Skinny Gossip wrote a post about Kate and how she is “fat”. Some of the criticisms? Upton has “huge thighs, NO waist and big fat floppy boobs.” Also, “She looks like a squishy brick. Is this what American women are ‘striving’ for now? The lazy, lardy look. Have we really gotten so fat in this country that Kate is the best we can aim for? Sorry, but: eww!” Skinny Gossip’s author, the anonymous “Skinny Girl”, ended up responding to the backlash she caused by writing, “As a thin person, I was annoyed by our double-standards around weight. For example, people think nothing of telling a thin woman — to their face, in front of an entire group of people — how skinny they are and even to suggest what they should eat.” And that’s really all we need to hear from that crazy woman, okay?

So, I wouldn’t have blamed Kate either way if she ignored this or if she called a press conference to call blast this critic an unhinged wingnut. Instead, Kate responded in a low-key way, having her spokesman say, “It’s absurd. Kate is gorgeous and very healthy.” Then Kate issued a simple statement to the press: “I’m not going to starve just to be thin. I want to enjoy life and I can’t if I’m not eating and miserable.” Okay. Good. Kate looks fine. Enough.

Photos courtesy of GQ.