Kim Kardashian: a suitable role model?
She became famous for appearing in a sex tape; and on the back of that has built a major career… doing what exactly? I know Kim Kardashian stars in a reality TV show; is married to a rapper; and likes posting selfies of her naked bum, said Victoria Coren Mitchell in The Observer. But I still don’t get it: “the 45 million Twitter followers, the mainstream British newspaper coverage”. And now this: the revelation that Harriet Harman – of all people – is a fan. On Good Morning Britain last week, the feminist and Labour MP praised the Kardashians, saying she likes the way they control “their own agenda”, and “make their own decisions”. What? Surely Harman should be taking the contrary view: that Kim Kardashian is encouraging young women to aspire only to money, fur coats and cars; and also showing them that flashing your crotch and baring your bum is a good way to get all that – even if you are a millionaire’s daughter who had many other options.
As a vocal anti-page 3 campaigner, Harman was sure to be ridiculed for defending the Kardashians, said Katie Glass in The Sunday Times. But her point was simply this: that whereas topless models are (usually) controlled by a male editor, for the benefit of male readers, the Kardashians do their own thing, for themselves. And in exploiting their “erotic capital”, they’re only doing what men have done for years. Brad Pitt was made famous by his topless turn in Thelma and Louise; Zayn Malik is forever whipping off his shirt to promote his records. No one complains about that; it’s only women’s behaviour that has been policed – and that surely does need to change.
It’s not the flesh-baring that troubles me about the “Kardashianisation of daily life”, said Lisa Armstrong in The Daily Telegraph. It’s the vacuousness of it. The Kardashians have nothing of interest to say. They only have power because we – the media, the fashion industry – yield it to them, in the hopes of tapping into their vast fan base. Yet many of those who follow the Kardashians don’t actually admire them, or aspire to be them: for them, Kim and co are just an amusing distraction. The answer is for us to ignore them; then they will, eventually, go away.