Carol Alt paved the way for the supermodels of today, but she didn't imagine some like Kate Upton would be one of them. The 53-year-old brunette beauty, who first covered Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue in 1982, dissed the 21-year-old blond, who covered the magazine in 2012 and 2013.
"What I don't understand with Kate is, what's all the hullaballoo?" Alt told HuffPost Live Tuesday. "There are many covers of Sports Illustrated—one girl was just wearing a bottom and [no top]. Actually, a couple times no top and one time just beads. I think that was Marisa [Miller, in 2008]."
"I don't get what all the hullabaloo is," Alt said of Upton. "I think what it is, is that in this moment there's just so much social media and that's why she's had more word of mouth than anybody."
The Raw Essentials beauty guru then clarified her comments, saying, "I like Kate. She's a pretty girl. But all the girls are nice and all the girls are pretty. And every cover, to me, deserves to be talked about."
Upton, who appears on the back cover of the magazine's 2014 edition, has yet to respond to Alt's comments. Models Nina Agdal, Lily Aldridge and Chrissy Teigen are featured on this year's cover.
In the 50th anniversary issue, Upton defied gravity and modeled a $35 Target bikini while posing in a weightless Zero G airplane. While her body of work may not seem all that impressive to Alt, the buxom blond earned high praise from editor MJ Day. "The world hasn't gotten any bigger, so the next frontier would be space, and the closest thing we can get to space would be zero-G," Day recently told The Cut.
"A human being floating in space in a bathing suit is out of the ordinary," she added. "But when you put Kate Upton in space, who doesn't take a bad picture, who doesn't have a bad angle, who looks incredible no matter what you do, you're guaranteed a sexy picture. I was so satisfied with the results. I love them."