When topless pictures of alleged Tiger Woods mistress Rachel Uchitel surfaced today, we were completely unsurprised. They’d been taken when Uchitel was an aspiring model over a decade (and at least one nose) ago, and a photographer unearthed them after she hit the headlines last week, just as happened with Cori Rist before her. And Jamie Junger before her. It’s almost as though they wanted to have them ready in case something happened, and they hit it big.
This happens all the time. Remember when shortly after Ashley Dupré was revealed as the prostitute who took down Eliot Spitzer topless pictures of her turned up in the Post? Or when after Heather Mills hooked up with Paul McCartney all those weird sexy “model” shoots surfaced? Living in a city with two tabloids, we assume that when we hear about a normal citizen getting linked to a celebrity, we’re going to inevitably see her splashed on the cover in the next few days, in a bikini, making a face that simultaneously says “I’ve been a bad, sexy girl” and “I just burped jalapeño.”
These are almost always “modeling shots,” done for some low-budget calendar or for a portfolio that never succeeded in getting the women a real gig — which leads us to believe that there are probably a bunch of slightly pervy male photographers out there just hoarding photos in wait for when one of their subjects sleeps with an athlete, movie star, or better yet, a politician. We get that, but what are these women thinking? They are clearly people who think that their looks and their sex appeal are going to be their ticket to a career, fame, money, or something. Is that kind of person more likely to hook up with a celebrity? Is that the ultimate validation?
Or is it just because these women are attractive (sometimes even beautiful) and it’s natural that they would both try to be models and end up luring in famous men? We’d accept that explanation if it weren’t for the fact that the shoots are always so tawdry — with the bikinis and the motorcycles and the endlessly cupped boobs — but then again, who knows what those above-mentioned photographers were promising them in order to get them to pose like that? We’re betting it was more like success and modeling contracts, and less like a sellout the moment fame strikes.
