When you think of someone that definitely had an under-mattress stack of Playboy magazines extensive enough to cause back problems (to say nothing of hairy palms), you would think of Ryan Lochte. So it's kind of shocking that he's never seen his fiancée, Kayla Rae Reid, in her July 2015 centerfold spread. But he has an equally shockingly great reason for avoiding her pictures.
"I don't want to see her as just that," he tells Cosmopolitan. "There’s more depth [to her]."
Of course, we need to say that any woman that chooses to appear in any magazine of her own volition, wearing whatever level of clothing she likes, deserves to be judged as a whole person. Removing one's clothes doesn't preclude one from seriousness of purpose, nor is it worthy of scorn. As we've said countless times, slut shaming is beyond uncool.
But we also have to applaud Ryan Lochte for transcending the "horny teenage moron" persona that was solidified when he got wasted, trashed a gas station, and told authorities that he had been robbed. Like, who knew that guy would have a level of regard for his fiancée that would surpass his level of regard for the Brazilian justice system. "I am large, I contain multitudes," Walt Whitman wrote. We're pretty sure he's talking about bad boy swimmers with a penchant for partying.
As a side note, we want to highlight their meeting story as possibly the most Los-Angeles-in-2016 one of all time. From Cosmo:
"The two met in January in Los Angeles nightclub Bootsy Bellows after matching on Tinder (they followed each other on social media before that). The club was packed that night, but they recognized one another as his group of guys and her group of girls passed each other in the VIP section."
Perfect. Literally perfect. We don't even have anything to add, just savor that thought. You're walking through a club and Ryan Lochte reaches out to you. And just like that, love.
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