The Kardashian Contradiction

The Kardashian Contradiction Dbag Dating

When it comes to the land where K is the only letter of the alphabet, I have a very firm stance: ignore and pray that it goes away.

The only problem is, it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime in the foreseeable future. In fact, the Kardashian clusterfuck seems to be growing at expedited speed, as though pumped with the same chemicals as its members’ individual body parts. Everywhere you turn, a new KK Klone is talking about her latest divorce, minor health issue, or other strenuous ordeal that was written into her life by the masterminds that are the show’s scriptwriters. I get the brilliant businesswomen part, the fact that their net worth may be higher than the government budget of Malawi, and that their Momager is probably going to be next to nominate herself as governor of California or VP of America. (The worst part is that this may actually work.) Nonetheless, I find these people to be the direct projection of the overall mass stupidity of this county and fail to see anything positive in their existence.

That is, until about a week ago.

My seventeen-year-old niece was polluting her brain reading the Story of Enrique Iglesias on this blog, when she suddenly came across the below photo of Mary Kate Olsen. “She looks SO skinny!” she exclaimed, visibly disturbed at the image of the minute twin clutching her oversize Balenciaga. Curious, I showed her photos Nicole Richie and Lindsey Lohan from the same époque, all spindly arms and protruding collarbones. “Did you guys think that looking like this was normal?” she exclaimed, eyeing their emaciated physiques with genuine confusion.

785c057ed874fed57069523d1efa3c41

Normal? I realized that I had never really given this much thought, simply taking it for what it was: an extreme beauty standard that had dominated a large part of my early twenties, dictating what girls of my generation had aspired to look like, most with questionable results. We had probably all suspected that it wasn’t exactly “normal”, yet this didn’t stop us from thinking it was cool, reason alone to try to match up.

Today, girls don’t need to match up. The women they draw influence from (not to be confused with “admire”) are no longer Adderalled-out, coffee-chugging bobbleheads, waiting for Rachel Zoe to package them up in identical boho getups. They are women who have carved their public identities on their own terms, without having to succumb to a mold of what they should look like. By unapologetically placing themselves front and center in the media spotlight, the Kardashian have are also thrust upon us their beauty ideals, their love for a good meal, their curvy silhouettes, their message that stick-skinny is not the only way to go. By standing up to the fashion industry, models like Gigi Hadid are slowly making the fashion industry mold to them, an idea that was previously unheard of. Fine, maybe neither the Kardashians or the Hadids are in the highest echelons when it comes to education, but that was never what we need celebrities for, anyway. We have always looked to celebrities to set a physical standard, and the stardards of today are a definite improvement into a healthier direction.

And so, amidst all the contouring and lip-pumping and duck-facing and useless noise, there may be a silver lining to the K-Kloud, after all.

One Comment

  • Hum, I don’t totally agree.

    As Tina Fey wrote in her 2011 memoir :

    I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful.

    Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyoncé and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *