Image via Complex Original
Beauty is only skin deep, and celebrity is pretty much confined to the epidermis as well. Celebrities are books that, for the most part, want to be judged by their covers—particularly a certain kind of celebrity.
We've reached a time when a woman who gets the right breaks (including being born into celebrity) can be kind of a big deal without actually doing much of anything. Celebutantes, models of the moment, athletes with more sex appeal than skills, actresses who can't quite find that legitimacy-conferring role—while these might all seem to be types of second-class celebrity, it's not necessarily so.
If you're hot enough, you can be just as famous as the talented (or more successful) ones.
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Paris Hilton
The originator of the celebutante concept, Paris sums up this entire list as well with her catchphrase: "That's hot."
The question is not whether the thing is valuable, or useful, or intelligent, or good. The only question that matters is whether it is hot. And if it's hot, it lives. Because this is survival of the hottest, and Paris Hilton is at the top of the food chain.
Top of the food chain? That's hot.
Brittny Gastineau
Brittny Gastineau, daughter of legendary New York Jets defensive end Mark Gastineau, signed with Elite Model Management after finishing college. She and mom Lisa Gastineau landed a reality show, The Gastineau Girls, and the one-two-three punch of celebutante + model + reality TV has kept Brittny famous for no real reason ever since.
Tila Tequila
Once upon a time there was a Playboy model and car-] show girl named Tila Nguyen. She was pretty, and sexy, but not famous. Then she showed up on MySpace as Tila Tequila, touting some sort of outrageous hard-partying bisexual version of her old self, and friending everything with a pulse. (Ah, MySpace. Takes you back, doesn't it?) And it worked. She was hot, and she was your friend. Your hot MySpace friend. You guys were close. You put her in your Top 12.
Adrianne Curry
Adrianne won the first season of America's Next Top Model, a reality show that manages to pull together a lot of pretty people but has yet to produce anything like a top model. A few years later, she popped up on The Surreal Life, where she caught the eye of Christopher Knight, the former Peter Brady. And so began another reality TV run, My Fair Brady, followed by a semi-career of wearing skimpy cosplay outfits at Comic-Con and playing video games. Adrianne and Christopher's divorce was finalized earlier this year.
Ivanka Trump
When your mom is a former model and Olympic athlete, you have a good chance of turning out pretty hot. As long as the genes from your dad, who is Donald Trump, stay the hell out of the way. That seems to have happened with Ivanka, who is beautiful by any standard. She's classier than most celebrity offspring (weird, 'cause her dad is Donald Trump and all); she is smart (graduated from Wharton); and she is said to be a good businesswoman.
Classy, smart and business-savvy—good traits but they don't automatically make a girl famous. Nope, the fashion-model looks (and, OK, cartoony mogul dad) did that.
Jenni "JWoww" Farley
You have to admit that, for all its faults, Jersey Shore is a show with personality. Mike "The Situation", DJ Pauly D, Snooki—these are exaggerated, brash, comical personalities.
And then you have JWoww, who is more about her exaggerated, brash, comical breasts. Well, she is.
Natalie Gulbis
In 2005, Sports Illustrated paid this easy-on-the-eyes golfer a backhanded compliment with the headline "American Kournikova." Gulbis is now 10 years into her professional golfing career, but in 2007, she did something that shattered the Kournikova comparison: She won an event. Anna may have more magazine covers, but Natalie has a tournament title, the 2007 Evian Masters, and that's one more title than Anna ever won.
Kourtney Kardashian
She's famous for how she looks...in that she looks a bit like her younger sister Kim. You'd never mistake them for twins, but Kim's fame is such that an almost-Kim gets props, too.
Katie Price, a.k.a. Jordan
Katie Price, known in her modeling days as Jordan, was a pioneer among British topless models for her huge fake breasts. She's had them pumped up and taken down numerous times, and she's also had liposuction and lip plumpage. Truly a wonder of modern plastic surgery.
Oh, and along the way she's been on no fewer than 10 reality TV series and has been the subject of a handful of TV documentaries. She has written four autobiographies and over a dozen children's books. She has a lingerie line, a fragrance, and some sort of horsey-apparel business.
She will go down in history as the woman who said, "Some people may be famous for creating a pencil sharpener. I'm famous for my tits."
Evelyn Lozada
Evelyn landed on Basketball Wives because of a 10-year relationship with Antoine Walker, and has been one of the main "wives" for all five seasons. It seemed she had devised a reality TV exit strategy when she married Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson on the fourth of July, thus enabling a planned series about their marriage. But that went up in smoke when Johnson allegedly headbutted her. On August 11, he was arrested on a charge of domestic battery and was cut by the Miami Dolphins. Lozada and Johnson's divorce was finalized on September 19.
So...yeah. No wacky Chad 'n Evelyn TV show. Not happening. Evelyn is reportedly filming season 5 of Basketball Wives as we speak.
Audrina Patridge
It wasn't Heidi Montag, Lauren Conrad, or Whitney Port—no, the babe who appeared in the most episodes of The Hills was Audrina Patridge. She went on to do Dancing With the Stars, placing seventh, and her own reality series Audrina. Although her show has been canceled, she's still a staple on every tabloid. She can thank her bikini body for that.
Aubrey O'Day
The girl group Danity Kane had a painfully long and public story: Synthesized in the test tube of a reality show (Making the Band 3) and micromanaged by Diddy, Danity Kane was a marketing campaign with occasional music from start to finish. And in the "finish" stage, Diddy kicked O'Day out because she had become too sexy, with a habit of flaunting her cleavage and/or nearly naked body. She went on to do Playboy, and her own reality-TV show (the short-lived All About Aubrey) and Celebrity Apprentice.
Courtney Stodden
Courtney Stodden just turned 18 in August. That's significant because she's been married since 2011 (she was a 16-year-old bride) to a man in his 50s. Add to this scenario the fact that she likes to parade around in bikinis flaunting her, until very recently, not-even-barely-legal sexiness, and you've got a person who gets a lot of attention on the Internet but doesn't, so far as we know, actually do anything.
Anna Kournikova
Her career statistics speak for themselves.
Maxim covers: 3
FHM covers: 2
Esquire covers: 1
GQ covers: 1
WTA singles titles: 0
Draya Michele
Draya Michele of Basketball Wives LA is an ex-skrippa who has dated Chris Brown, Wiz Khalifa, former L.A. Laker Javaris Crittenton, and perhaps players to be named later. She's done sexy photo shoots and now designs bikinis. So...still pretty much just hot.
Nicole "Coco" Austin
Famous because of her looks? Yes, if we can agree that having an enormous butt is a look. Coco is the embodiment of "whooty" and PAWG (phat ass white girl), and until recently, she wasn't known for much more than that and her husband, rapper Ice-T. She and Ice now have their own reality series, Ice Loves Coco, which has become a surprise hit.
Diora Baird
We had high hopes for Diora Baird ever since we noticed her in Guess? advertisements in the early '00s and on the cover of Playboy in 2005. She was so damn sexy and proud of it that we thought she was bound to become a big star. Seven years later, she's not a big star, just a pretty face with big breasts—and that's nothing to sneeze at—who's still plugging away at auditions. We're not counting her out.
Ali Landry
Ali Landry was Miss USA 1996—that's not nothing. But the second sentence of her Wikipedia entry pretty much sums it up: "She is perhaps best known as the Doritos Girl from her 1998 Super Bowl commercial..."
Joanna Krupa
Joanna is a Polish hottie who needs no explanation or instruction manual. She's just really, really hot. Want your lingerie or swimsuits to look sexy? Put 'em on Joanna! Want to sell magazines? Put Joanna on the cover! Want men to tolerate their girlfriends' or wives' Dancing With the Stars habit? Put Joanna on the show!
It's not just DWTS. Joanna also was head judge on Poland's Next Top Model and is currently on The Real Housewives of Miami. A true American success story, proof of all you can accomplish when you put your mind to it and happen to be really, really hot.
Amber Rose
With her distinctive Sinead O'Connor hairdo and in-your-face sexuality, ex-stripper Amber isn't everyone's cup of tea. But she was Kanye West's cup of tea, and proved intriguing enough that she sustained a career as some sort of whatever after they split up. She's currently pregnant with Wiz Khalifa's baby.
Paulina Gretzky
There are lots of famous offspring you'll never hear or see much about. Paulina Gretzky isn't one of them. Although she released the pop single "Collecting Dust" while in her teens, the 23-year-old daughter of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and actress Janet Jones is clearly destined to be a supermodel.
Or at least to take lots of beautiful pictures.
Ok, she's a sexy beast on the Instagram, it's close enough to supermodel status for us.
Amber Heard
She's a stunning Texas blonde who likes guns and muscle cars. She loves boys (allegedly Johnny Depp, after his marriage fell apart) and she loves girls (specifically Tasya van Ree, her lesbian lover for a few years). She's bounced around in movies and TV but hasn't really got an acting career. You think of Amber Heard and you don't really think "actress." You just think "hot." With Empire State out next year, we hope that changes soon.
Kate Upton
Including models in a discussion of celebrities who are only famous for their looks would seem a bit pointless. Really, isn't their job description to look good?
Truth. But Kate Upton has skyrocketed to a special level of fame without really having to do a single thing apart from put on a bikini and wade out into tropical waters. Sports Illustrated has picked some winners over the years, but we can't remember an SI Swimsuit Issue girl becoming this ubiquitous, this quickly, just for doing her job.
OK, she dances a bit. But we're talking about a mere swimsuit model on the verge of world domination. You can't attribute that to the Dougie and Cat Daddy.
Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian catches some heat for being a celebutante on steroids, a social-climbing socialite with absolutely no claim to fame other than, well, her own fame.
But even if you're feeling Kardashian fatigue these days, you have to admit that this is a very beautiful woman. Ignore the tabloids. Ignore the tweets. Ignore the relatives. Ignore the scripted paparazzi performances. Ignore it all, peel it all away, throw it in the dumpster, and you're left with a gorgeous babe.
Kelly Brook
Perhaps the greatest example of someone who is simply too damn perfect not to be famous—that's been Kelly Brook's story for years. Is she an actress? Is she a glamor model? Really, what is she? Whatever it is, she's leveraged the hell out of it, making a lingerie calendar every year, appearing in not-great movies, showing up for charity events and taking money to shill for companies with stuff to sell. Now she even has her own clothing line (for curvy ladies).
Yeah, but what is she?
Who cares? She's hot.
