The 15 Hottest Women Of 2011 (So Far)

This has been an important year for Kim K. As you're aware, Kim and Kourtney Take New York premiered on E! last January, Keeping Up With The Kardashians is on its sixth season, and K-Dash fashion returned to QVC. So, as you can see, she's been through some pretty important stuff in the past six months. Oh, yeah, and there's that trivial little fact that she recently got engaged to NBA player Kris Humphries. Yeah, um, denial is the first stage of grief; we're working through it ourselves.

If anyone else was carried into the Grammys in a giant egg, and then later hatched on stage, they would probably be told to seek help. But not Lady Gaga, whose hit machine The Fame Monster won Best Pop Vocal Album. Her third album, Born This Way, was released in late May and sold 1.1 million copies in its first week on shelves, topping the charts in a whopping 23 countries. Not to mention, she was given the honor of being Elton John's child's godmother. We see an animated Disney movie in the works.

Ever since Prince William proposed to Kate Middleton in 2010, the following year, until their wedding on April 29th, was entirely devoted to the royal wedding. The event marked the day that Middleton would no longer be referred to as "Waity Katey," but, rather, the Duchess of Cambridge. We'll stop the fairy tale story there, though; you're most likely aware of it already. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been tweeting about how you had enough of the royal wedding coverage all throughout April.

Besides getting engaged and having a baby boy, what else has Natalie Portman been up to this year? Oh, right, she won an Oscar for playing a ballet dancer who had a sex dream with Mila Kunis, thus fulfilling one of our many fantasies, in Black Swan. She also starred in the surprisingly tolerable rom-com, No Strings Attached, the comparably forgettable drama The Other Woman, rocked a teeny bikini in the James Franco/Danny McBride romp through Medieval Times Your Highness.



After winning a golden statue for a presitigious flick, it's understandable why Portman would sign on to Your Highness and this summer's mega-blockbuster Thor: Every serious A-list actress needs to be in at least one film more people than just the smaller arthouse crowd will actually pay to see.

Is it too early to call 2011 "Britney Spears' official comeback year"? The controversial pop superstar's previous attempt to revive her career at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, with an performance of "Gimme More," was prematurely labeled as Spears' return. Yet, this year, with a new album out, Femme Fatale, which has already spawned three chart-toppers, her Femme Fatale Tour selling out at every stop, her body back in perfect shape, and her head of hair completely grown back in, we think it's safe to say that Britney is back, bitches.

Funny girls are always overlooked for their hotness, when, really, it just brings on a whole new appeal. It takes a seriously beautiful lady to make us still care about Saturday Night Live's "Target Lady," for example. After planting her roots as a featured SNL player, Wiig has moved on to starring roles in film. Her female buddy comedy Bridesmaids, which she co-wrote and starred in, has killed at the box office, consequently increasing the demand for female comedies. There's something about a woman who can write a scene where her best friend poops her pants that makes us want to marry her.

The death threats from those struck with a severe case of Bieber fever against Selena Gomez are making her more popular than ever. Not only did the 18-year-old host the 2011 Much Music Awards, but she recently released her third album, When The Sun Goes Down, and her latest film, Monte Carlo (co-starring hotties Leighton Meester and Katie Cassidy) hits theaters today. But what's even more remarkable than her prolificness is that we actually really care now. Thanks to her and Bieber's PDA seen all over the world, we're getting familiar with another side of the former Disney princess; now, we have another reason to be embarrassingly jealous of a 17-year-old boy.

Brooklyn Decker has remained in the public eye for over a year now. In February of last year, she landed the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and was subsequently voted Esquire's "Sexiest Woman Alive." Rather than only gracing the glossy pages of magazines, this year she took her talents on-screen to star opposite Adam Sandler in Just Go With It, in which audiences actually had the chance to acceptably watch her in a bikini instead of streaming the latest paparazzo-filmed TMZ video of her hanging out at the beach. But, the "model turned actress" title has stuck; next year, she'll be starring in Battleship with Liam Neeson and Alexander Skarsgard.

Although she'd probably much rather be known for Green Lantern and her new Chanel campaign, at this point, a documentary about her personal life would've sold more tickets than her disappointing superhero film. Not only did Lively begin the year entangled in a tabloid-spun love triangle between Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds, but she is currently the subject of scrutiny for her debatably authentic nude photos that leaked online and her summer fling with newly single Leonardo DiCaprio.

During the major awards season, this then-unknown 20-year-old actress became the biggest threat to Natalie Portman's expected glory. Lawrence's role as Ree in the independent drama Winter's Bone, nominated for Best Picture, shot her up into instant A-list status.



Since then, she played Mystique in the hit X:Men: First Class and recently landed the coveted role of Katniss Everdeen, the lead in the young adult series The Hunger Games, i.e. the likely successor to Twilight fame when it hits theaters next year. Think of Lawrence as the next Kristen Stewart, except, she's a gorgeous blonde, not socially awkward and doesn't have any pictures of her smoking pot available for public consumption online.

Even though she's referred to by some people as Esquire's former "Sexiest Woman Alive," this 31-year-old actress has spent most of her career known as (insert name here)'s girlfriend; most recently, Derek Jeter. Basically, Kelly's been "the cheerleader" off and even on-screen, with her debut role as pom-pom princess Layla Garrity in Friday Night Lights. But it looks like she's on her way to establishing herself in her own right this year, following up a starring role in the tepid, yet commercially successful, PG-13 Single White Female ripoff The Roommate with an upcoming role in ABC highly anticipated Charlie's Angels, set to premiere this fall.

With Beyonce's new singles underperforming, the first six months of 2011 have been a prime time for Kelly Rowland to establish herself as major competition in the music industry. While we await what's in store for her as the year continues, she's already gotten it off to a promising start with her radio killer "Motivation," featuring Lil Wayne. In addition, she was chosen to serve as a judge on the popular British singing competition X Factor.

Rose Byrne creeps up on you. No, not in the horrific way that the evil spirits in her ridiculously creepy hit film Insidious did earlier this year. It's more like the way her character Moira MacTaggert inserted herself into Charles Xavier's life in X-Men: First Class, i.e. more like you don't realize you're watching her until she subtly burrows herself in your heart. Take Bridesmaids, for instance, in which she played the rich, begrudgingly overachieving foil to Kristen Wiig's character. You hate her throughout the first half of the movie, but then you walk out of the theater with the urge to Google her. We're willing to be that Byrne has become become a favorite amongst film execs.

We have to admit, we initially had doubts about anyone replacing Megan Fox. We damn near believed it was impossible, given she's Megan Fox. But, lo and behold, supermodel Rosie Huntington-Whiteley made it difficult for the rest of the word to remember the actress she was replacing in the potentially last installment of Michael Bay's Transformers franchise, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. Known previously for her work as a Victoria's Secret model, the hype that has swarmed our recent cover girl thanks to Transformers has made Huntington-Whiteley the newest standard for Hollywood blockbuster bombshell.

Needless to say, Kate Upton is already a favorite amongst sneakerheads and YouTube junkies. But it was that tiny bubble of a photo on the cover of this year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue that caused her popularity to explode before a worldwide audience. At just 19, the Midwestern bombshell has already earned the right to add "super" in front of her "model" title, with campaigns for Victoria's Secret and other high-end companies. Since she's already built a solid reputation for taking a poster-worthy picture and being mistakenly linked to Kanye West, there's nowhere left for the wildly energetic young model to go but to a cinematic mega-hit, just like her predecessors. We're calling it now.