Finally! The truth about ‘perfect’ celeb bodies like Khloe’s
We’ve all been there. That unflattering snap when the camera caught you unawares and you get to see what you really look like.
It can come as quite an unpleasant shock, like catching sight of some old bag in a shop window and realising, to your horror, that it’s your own reflection in the glass.
God knows, it has happened to me enough times. At first it used to upset me, this clear discrepancy between how I looked in my head and how I was in real life. But then I realised that’s just life and there is a limit to what you can realistically do about it. Besides, there are more important things to worry about.
Unless, that is, you are someone whose entire existence is based on projecting a certain appearance. Whose vast popularity and wealth are predicated on being an ‘uber-influencer’ who is paid to show the world how perfect they are.
If that’s your schtick, a dose of reality can be a genuine calamity.
Step forward Khloe Kardashian, whom fate dealt a cruel blow last weekend when a — gasp! — unretouched photograph of her in a bikini surfaced online.
Judging by the frantic efforts of her ‘team’ to have it expunged from the internet, you might have thought it revealed something truly terrible about the lovely young Khloe.
A scaly tail, perhaps, or a tattoo of Donald Trump. In fact, the problem was far more serious: she looked like any ordinary young woman.
No wonder there was such a panic, and her lawyers sprang into action. Because ordinary is not something Kardashians do. Neither is natural. They have built an empire out of being fantasies of womanhood designed to bewitch men and inspire awe and imitation in women.
Having one of their clan out there on the internet looking perfectly unremarkable in a bikini is a PR disaster. especially as this Khloe — the real Khloe — is far removed from the glossy version we usually see.
That one has perfect smooth skin and a sultry pout, her body permanently arranged in a provocative pose that promises all sorts of behaviour unsuited to a family newspaper. This one is smiling goofily at the camera, standing unselfconsciously in front of a pool, entirely unready for her closeup. Instagram Khloe is heavily retouched and Photoshopped. Pool Khloe is as nature intended (apart from the surgeries, of course). In Kardashian terms, that is a PR disaster.
Don’t get me wrong: she looks lovely. But for someone rarely seen in public without heavy retouching, this is too real by far. For it exposes an uncomfortable truth (almost as uncomfortable as those bikini bottoms) about the clan’s empire: it is built on a fantasy, aided and abetted here and there by the skilled ministrations of a surgeon.
The image projected by Khloe and her sisters, and the lifestyle they sell, is not real. It is, in layman’s terms, false advertising.
THIS wouldn’t matter if they were upfront about it. After all, everyone knows pictures on the internet and in the media often get a little help from Mr Photoshop. But the Kardashians refuse to acknowledge this. This occasionally makes them look vain and stupid, which is fun for the rest of us; but it exposes a more serious problem: the way people like the Kardashians get away with using digital manipulation to flog their merchandise.
In this respect, Khloe’s sister Kylie is probably the worst offender. She became (allegedly) America’s youngest billionaire by selling lipgloss that promised to give wearers a pillowy pout like hers, when it appears that pout was created by fillers and filters.
This is deeply damaging to the minds and selfesteem of the millions of girls and young women who compare themselves with their role models and are left feeling hopelessly inadequate, increasingly to the point where they subject themselves to unnecessary procedures in order to replicate the perfection they see on screen.
Which is, as Khloe here so clearly demonstrates, all a fantasy.