Does Kim Kardashian Actually Make Women Feel Bad About Themselves?
Sure, she has a lot of influence. But who has the power?
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I really don’t think or care much about Kim Kardashian and her bevy of K-named sisters.
Then, all of a sudden, Kim (heretofore intermittently referred to as “KK”) started popping up in all kinds of headlines.
There was the Taylor Swift song that caused her to lose a few thousand Instagram followers, followed by her ill-received appearance at the Tom Brady roast, followed by that punishingly corseted Met Gala dress (which my friend Charlie Brown wrote about so astutely here.)
Still, I didn’t pay much mind. Another day, another KK headline. Who cares?
But then I was alerted to a bit of news that was interesting to me.
I learned of it first through another article by Charlie Brown. And then on this Reddit thread. And then through this article, by my friend June Kirri.
And that bit of news is this:
Kim Kardashian makes girls and women feel bad about themselves.
Seriously, I had no idea. And I’m still picking my jaw up from the floor.
Before I continue, I want to give a bit of a throat clear.
Are you ready? A-hem!
I have been a teenage girl and a young woman.
I am a not-so-young woman now, but not so old that I don’t remember what a fragile time of life that can be.
I came of age in the ’80s and ’90s. These were the halcyon days before the insidiousness of Instagram and TikTok, but we were still fed a steady stream of images from fashion magazines, television, and film.
The beauty and style icons of that time were singers, actors, and supermodels, including Madonna, Julia Roberts, Cindy Crawford, and Kate Moss, and my personal favourite, Demi Moore.
Collectively, these women didn’t have much in common, except for this: They were all thin and beautiful.
The message was clear — and, I may add, untempered by the 21st century’s body positivity movement and easier access to images of different body types: Thin was beautiful, and what was considered “beautiful” was probably unrealistic for most women.
Long story short, I didn’t think I was thin or beautiful enough, and my self-esteem was delicate, to say the least.
All of which is to say to my sisters in wavering self-esteem: I get it.
And I want you to know that I write from a place of compassion and concern and understanding.
I absolutely believe you when you say that you don’t feel completely awesome about yourself all the time. (Hey, I don’t either.)
But now that my throat is clear, I’m about to deliver a little tough love:
It’s not Kim Kardashian who’s making you feel bad about yourselves.
It’s someone else.
Yep, KK has a ton of influence…
As of this writing, Kim Kardashian has 362 million Instagram followers.
This is even after losing a few thousand thanks to Taylor Swift, and a few thousand more as a result of the recent “digitine effect,” a movement towards de-platforming celebrities who haven’t gone public with support for Palestine in the war in Gaza (and which has also targeted — say it with me — Taylor Swift).
No matter. 362 million followers is still a lot of followers, and KK’s influence on fashion, beauty, and body shape trends is undeniable.
She has been credited with creating the selfie. And is a major contributor to the current beauty ideal of the “Instagram Face.” In 2014, she broke the Internet with a photo of her ample rear end.
And, perhaps most concerningly, she is at the forefront of the current trend towards the “slim-thick” body ideal, characterized by full breasts and big, round bottoms and teeny-tiny waists (remember that Met Gala dress, y’all?).
It’s this body type ideal — largely unattainable for many (if not most) girls and women — that, according to this oft-cited study, seems to have a particularly detrimental effect on young women’s self-esteem.
And it’s the pursuit of this ideal, as well as that weird-looking Instagram Face, that appears to have women of all ages spending money on cosmetics and surgical procedures such as lip plumping and the “BBL” — that is, the Brazilian butt lift — in increasing numbers.
As I say, it’s concerning.
And while it may be difficult to quantify exactly just how damaging the “KK Effect” is, anything that causes girls and women to seek expensive and possibly dangerous procedures in order to feel better about themselves warrants examination.
I feel this especially as the mother of a 13-year old girl, who, thankfully, at this time, seems impervious to KK’s mysterious charms (I asked). But if a decade and a half of parenting has taught me anything, it’s that things can change.
But there is some good news to be found in all of this.
…but who actually has the power?
When we collectively talk about the cultural juggernaut that is the Kardashian family, we always say the same thing:
“They’re famous for being famous.”
It’s a criticism, obviously, implying that the members of this family have “done nothing” to earn their fame and wealth, except to win a game at which so many Americans have strived and failed — the game of celebrity.
To be sure, the Kardashians have worked very hard at putting and keeping themselves in the spotlight, from the earliest photographs a young KK by Paris Hilton’s side to a notorious sex tape to a long-running reality show.
But here’s what we forget: Nobody can just “make themselves” famous without a lot of help.
Fame is a symbiotic relationship between celebrity and public.
It’s a team sport. The members of the team are the celebrity themselves, and their fans and followers.
KK is the star of her own team, but her 362 million Instagram followers, and everyone who ever watched her sex tape, and anyone who has ever hate-followed her or clicked on an article about her or watched her reality show are the starting line-up (yeah, I don’t know anything about sports, so let me know if that’s a bad metaphor).
Point being, KK is nothing without the collective of “us.”
We made and are making her rich and famous.
Why? I have no idea. Many smarter, better writers than myself have spilled a lot of ink trying to figure out the public fascination with this family and what they reflect about the culture.
But I do know that when you hand fame and wealth to someone on a silver platter, you also have the power to take the fame and wealth away.
Or, at the very least, you have the power to unfollow and ignore them.
This isn’t just good news.
It’s fantastic news to any girl, woman, or anyone who says that KK is making them “feel bad” about themselves: You can literally expunge her from your algorithms and never see her face again.
But I have even better news than this.
We don’t just have power over KK, you know
Bear with me a moment while I cast my mind back to those fragile, Demi Moore-worshipping days of my late teens and early 20s.
There were times when I cried in fitting rooms.
Some quarter of a century ago, I actually considered postponing my wedding until I lost 30 pounds.
I tried all manner of restrictive diets, and when those diets failed, I binged on sugar and caffeine and junk food and gave myself insomnia and heart palpitations. Sometimes I threw some wine in there because apparently I wanted to feel even worse.
I called myself unkind names. “Fat,” “ugly,” “slob,” “loser.”
I have not recognized my own reflection in the mirror.
And I have hated myself.
What I’m saying to my sisters one more time is: I get it.
But here’s a pop grammar quiz: Who is the subject in all the above sentences?
Well, first of all, I’ll tell you who it is not.
It is not my parents or any other family member. It’s not my husband or children. It’s not my friends or a former boyfriend or even a stranger in the street.
It’s not movies or television or social media.
It’s not Demi Moore. And it’s sure as hell not Kim Kardashian.
Nope.
At the nadir of my self-esteem, the person who was making me feel bad about myself was…me.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”- Eleanor Roosevelt, human rights activist (among other things), and a solid role model any day of the week
The road to healthy self-esteem can be dark and twisting and uphill and a damn difficult slog.
Hey, even KK herself has struggled, most notably when she was ruthlessly body-shamed by the media for her weight gain during her first pregnancy and ever so charmingly compared to Shamu the whale. (Nice, right?)
As for me, I am still working on losing a final 20 pounds (you can read about that here).
But it’s not because I want to look like KK, or anybody else.
It’s because I want to be the best version of myself I can be.
Which means that I want to be healthy, confident, a hard worker, a courteous and kind person, and a present mother who sets an example for her kids by never saying mean things about herself in front of them.
The lifestyle changes and inner work seem to be working.
How do I know?
Well, for one, I don’t cry in fitting rooms anymore. If a pair of jeans is too tight, I simply ask for a larger size.
Self-esteem, my sisters, is an inside job.
The power to feel good about ourselves is all ours.
Let’s model that for the young women in our lives, and let’s never forget it ourselves.
And, please, let us not give one iota of that power to Kim Kardashian.
Or, for that matter, to anyone else.
Kim Downey is a mother, writer, and pop culture enthusiast. She also writes about fitness, sobriety, and parenthood.