Steven Burton/Coleman-RaynerEver wonder what Kate Upton looked like when she was the age of a high schooler? Spoiler alert: Almost the same.
The 22-year-old blonde bombshell and Sports Illustrated and Victoria's Secret catalogue supermodel has often showcased her curvy figure and bright smile in racy photo shoots and has drawn comparisons to sex icon Marilyn Monroe. From the looks of newly released fashion pics, Upton was just as beautiful at age 15, when she started modeling and when she was, as Britney Spears would say, "not a girl, not yet a woman."
The images, taken by fashion photographer Steven Burton during a 2008 photo shoot, show Upton wearing a variety of playful and relatively modest outfits. Among them—a multi-colored, striped sweater and black low-rise jeans that shows off her midriff, paired with a four-toned newsboy cap (see above), as well as menswear and a silver sequined sheath dress (see more photos of 15-year-old Upton here)
Upton signed with a modeling agency at age 15, when she was a sophomore at Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy in Florida.
"When I first started modelling, I was a normal catalogue model," Upton told Elle U.K. in an interview posted this week. "Then, I became a woman, and I was really excited about becoming a woman. Because I'm from Florida, it's all about being in bathing suits. It's a different view of beauty there. You are ugly if you don't have a curvy body. And I didn't have one, and then I got one, and thought, 'Yessss!'"
Upton told Esquire magazine in a June 2011 interview that her body began developing in junior high and that she was made fun of for being "flat-chested."
"Everyone would go, "She's not pretty! She doesn't have boobs!' So I always had boob envy," she said. "And when finally I went through my growth spurt, and they appeared, and I just... I loved them."