It’s not often that supermodels get mixed up in the golf news cycle,
but just six months after appearing on Golf Digest’s cover with Arnold
Palmer, Kate Upton is back at it again.
Upton tweeted the following yesterday:
Unfortunately for the two-time Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model, she didn’t quite have her facts straight.
LACC General Manager Kirk Reese told GolfChannel.com that it’s not
true that women are not allowed to play before noon, and his private
club has had female members since 1898.
The good news is that even misinformed mentions of golf by
celebrities with Upton’s stature can help make the game more relevant,
and a golfing Kate Upton certainly can’t hurt an industry that has lost 5
million of golfers in the last decade and has seen participation of
18-to-34 years olds drop by 30 percent.
Another silver lining in all of this? It appears that Upton has made a new golfing partner as a result of her tweet.
I’m wearing all Express in this look. I could not get over the prints
on the skorts they were selling, I loved the idea of mixing the print
with one of their graphic tees.
I’m really excited to help host the Express x Kate Upton event Tuesday July 8th in Times Square.
Come hang out from 6-8 on July 8th and get your hands on new jeans
and welcome the Express ambassador Kate Upton with refreshments and a
25% discount!
Be one of the first shoppers to spend $200 and get your photo snapped with Kate, can’t wait to see you all there!
Photo by Rommel Demano/Getty Images for The Daily Front Row
Gather around, Muggles! There’s another Harry Potter movie in the works and casting rumors are a-flying.
J.K. Rowling has officially finished the script for the film adaptation of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The book was originally a textbook Harry studied in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone about, well, magical creatures. Eddie Redmayne is reportedly set star as Newt Scamander, a magizoologist and author, and Kate Upton is rumored to be up for a leading role.
Now, Upton’s no stranger to being in front of the camera, but Hollywood is a far cry from the glossy world of fashion editorials. Fans as devout as Harry Potter’s will likely have many things to say about who gets cast, but we’ve got faith in Upton: She’s been gone for a minute and something as wonderful as Harry Potter could be amazing for her.
But what about all the British people? Well, this here story takes place in New York. So, expect less accents and more, uh, aggression. Good thing most wizards and witches wear black.
Here's what they really think about how women are portrayed on screen
Kids are fed up with Kate Upton.
When the ads for Game of War
started showing up on my students’ phones last year—they haven’t
stopped—many were annoyed. They hated that it was impossible to close
the ad, forcing them instead to watch the video until the end. But what
really irritated them was Ms. Upton, in a full-cleavage-baring white
flowing dress. The ads are clearly effective for some, but the message is obvious: Game of War
is a boys’ game, and Upton is the game’s mascot, walking through
battles totally unscathed and doing nothing except looking pretty.
Action games with big battles like Game of War are
incredibly exciting to kids. And kids I’ve worked with, both male and
female, will put up with a lot to play exciting games. But it doesn’t
mean they like the way women are portrayed. Yet the video game industry
seems to base much of its game and character design on a few
assumptions, among them that girls don’t play big action games, boys
won’t play games with strong female characters, and male players like
the sexual objectification of female characters.
You can guess what the results are: a gaming landscape
that thrusts a hyper-sexualized depiction of women onto the phone,
computer and TV screens of millions of boys and girls.
MORE What Boys Really Want
The issue of sexism in video games, long simmering, is
sure to bubble up again during the Comic-Con convention this weekend in
San Diego. (47% of attendees are expected to be women.) In collaboration
with my colleagues, Charlie Kuhn and gaming expert Ashly Burch, we
surveyed more than 1,400 middle and high school students from throughout
the country last year. We asked them to tell us what they thought about
gender representation in games, what games girls play, and more. Our
survey was exploratory—we didn’t have the resources to conduct a
thorough evaluation—but we believed it was an important issue to study
and hope others will follow.
Here are three things we found that may surprise.
Boys believe female characters are treated too often as sex objects
47% of middle school boys agreed or strongly agreed, and
61% of high school boys agreed or strongly agreed. “If women are
objectified like this it defeats the entire purpose of fighting,” Theo,
an eighth-grader who loves playing Mortal Kombat, told us. “I would respect the [female] character more for having some dignity.”
Both boys and girls aren’t more likely to play a game based on the gender of the protagonist
70% of girls said it doesn’t matter and 78% of boys said it doesn’t matter. Interestingly, boys care less about playing as a male character as they age and girls care more about playing as a female one.
Girls play a variety of game genres
26% played first-person shooter games like Call of Duty and HALO, 36% played role-playing games like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto, and 17% played sports games like FIFA and Madden. (19% did not play games, compared to 3% of boys.)
We also asked kids if they identified as “gamers.” Especially in light of the “Gamergate” controversy
that erupted last year and revealed intense sexism among some
self-identified gamers, would the young people who identified as gamers
share any of these sentiments? But very few of our respondents knew what
Gamergate was and they had very different responses from what one may
expect: 55% of boys who identify as gamers think there should be more
female heroes in games, and 57% believe that female characters are too
often treated as sex objects.
This all matters because gaming has become an important
part of our culture, and it’s sending the wrong message onto our boys’
and girls’ sceens. Our kids deserve better. And it’s what they want.
Rosalind Wiseman is the author of Masterminds and Wingmen (Harmony Books, 2013) as well as Queen Bees and Wannabes (Harmony Books, 2002)
Photo by Rommel Demano/Getty Images for The Daily Front Row 
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