Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue : 50 Years of Women's Objectification

[Scootaloo]

73. I suspect your suspicions are based more on the inconveniance this causes for your position

It's not just that Antarctica is polar. Antarctica also has no warm-water currents; they're blocked off by the circumpolar current that surrounds the continent. There's also not much by way of windbreak anywhere in the place; the tallest things outside the mountains (which are nowhere near the coast / ice shelves) are birds that are four feet tall if they stretch. So there's the wind chill.

Blankets? Okay. here, let me show you something.



That is a picture of people on an Antarctica tour. They are dressed in multiple layers of clothing designed for very low temperatures. This clothing is supplied, in this case, by the national Geographic society, and I have to imagine the NGS knows how to equip people for that. You know what? all of those people in that picture are still cold. They're going to hike around and take pictures for maybe 30 minutes before being shuttled back to that ship where they will hide out in warmed cabins and thaw out while talking about penguins. And this is a springtime picture in the South Georgia Islands, which is basically Antarctica's version of a tropical getaway. So yeah... cold place.

Blankets... really aren't going to cut the mustard. especially not over the course of hours. While I'm sure the people around her made all the efforts they could to keep Kate warm, what she describes is completely inadequate for the conditions. There's also just the consideration of how the industry works - you want to get as many shots, as quickly as you can, but the shoot can still take hours upon hours.

The problem is just that the human body doesn't withstand Antarctica very well - it's the one place humans have never settled, and for good reasons. it doesn't matter that each instance of Upton's exposure to the weather was as brief as the crew could make it - it was still exposure. Exposure is cumulative, if you're not taking time to fully recover from it. And in fact alternating from warm to cold to warm to cold again can make it worse. Here we have a woman who is doing nude photo shoots in the most inhospitable place with breathable air on the planet, and all that's standing between her and becoming an ice sculpture is some interns with quilts.

And you want to call her a liar, on the basis that she's a model? Really?