I thought of this when Kim Kardashian
posted another internet-breaking nude selfie last night, showing off her
voluptuous torso just three months after giving birth to her second
child.‘When you’re like, I have nothing to wear. LOL,’ she captioned the photo.I chuckled, as I often do at Kim’s antics.
She’s a smart cookie who, like her
rapper husband Kanye West, knows exactly how to set the world agog with
apoplexy with a single tweet.Of course, nudity has been a key part of her brand ever since she first burst into public consciousness via a leaked sex tape.
Since then, Kim’s ruthlessly exploited
every crevice of her body in a way so spectacularly successful that it’s
turned her into a multi-millionaire.Until recently, I’ve had no problem with
this. She works hard, has a keen eye for fashion and beauty lines, and
has proven herself to be a skilled self-publicising marketer.
When she first broke the internet in
2014 by baring her champagne-dangling derriere for PAPER magazine, I
defended her amid the inevitable ‘slut-shaming’ onslaught which
instantly erupted.
I wrote then: ‘Kim
doesn’t take drugs, get drunk, fall out of clubs, cheat on her man, or
do any of the other insanely louche things that stars with far greater
‘talent’ often do. She’s good to her fans, and is by all accounts a
good, loving daughter, sister, wife and now mom herself.’
My conclusion read: ‘Kim
Kardashian-West’s laughing all the way to the bank. And all you lazy,
snide, snobbish, patronising and hypocritical critics can go kiss her
a*s – there’s plenty of room.’But that was then.
After she tweeted her latest nude
picture last night, I replied by saying: ‘I know the old man’s $50
million in debt, Kim (a jokey reference to Kanye’s preposterous recent
claims of financial hardship) ‘but this is absurd. Want me to buy you
some clothes?’She wasn’t amused.
‘Hey @PiersMorgan,’ she retorted, ‘never
offer to buy a married woman clothes. That’s on some Ashley Madison
type s**t. #forresearch’.
I got off lightly.Minutes later she ripped into
Oscar-winner Bette Midler, who had also mocked her photo by saying:
‘Kim
Kardashian tweeted a nude selfie today. If Kim wants to see a part of
her we’ve never seen, she’s gonna have to swallow the camera.’
‘Hey @BetteMidler,’ snapped Kim, ‘I know it’s past your bedtime but if you’re still up and reading this send nudes.’
Her next tweet to
Bette was brutal: ‘I really didn’t want to bring up how you sent me a
gift awhile back trying to be a fake friend then come at me..’
Ouch.But Kim’s real venom was reserved for
19-year-old actress Chloë Grace Moretz, who tweeted this response to the
nude selfie:
‘I truly hope you realize how important setting goals are
for young women, teaching them we have so much more to offer than just
our bodies.’
‘Let’s all welcome @ChloeGMoretz to twitter,’ Kim sniped back, ‘since no one knows who she is. Your nylon cover is cute boo.’
All of this was a little odd since Kim’s
usually very nice and polite on social media, in direct contrast to
Kanye whose Twitter rants have grown steadily more insane and abusive in
recent weeks.In fact, the tone
and wording of the tweets led me to suspect Mr West may have seized her
phone, a fear exacerbated by another chest-beating exclamation which
read, ‘Sorry I’m late to the party guys, I was busy cashing my 80
million video game check & transferring 53 million into our joint
account.’
Pure Kanye.But until or if we hear otherwise, we
must assume it really was Kim who’s now morphed into a bragging,
taunting female version of her other half
In one final act of Kimye defiance, she unleashed a second nude photo with the hashtag: ‘#liberated.
Hmmmm.I’m not so sure any of this is very liberating.In fact, I found it all a bit depressing.Kim’s 35 now, and the mother of two very young children.
She still looks fantastic, and of course has every right to post as many naked pictures as she likes. It’s her body, her life.But it’s hard to escape the creeping
suspicion that this new frenzied and frankly rather desperate attempt to
‘break the internet’ is happening because other younger members of her
family have been grabbing all the scantily-clad attention recently,
notably half-sister 20-year-old Kendall ‘Instagram Queen’ Jenner.
Every supermodel, movie and pop sex
symbol (with the exception of the increasingly grotesque and
embarrassing Madonna) knows there comes a time when you have to hand the
baton onto the next generation, however reluctantly.
Nobody is a better illustration of this
than Cindy Crawford, who still commands huge attention as a model but
has moved to a less-flesh business model with great style, dignity and
commercial benefit.
It’s not so easy perhaps when your brand
is so indelibly linked to your own nudity, but it’s essential if you
don’t want to fall into the trap of becoming an ageing parody.
That moment of truth has arrived for Kim Kardashian.As Chloë Grace Moretz so rightly said,
does she really want young girls to think the only way to succeed in
life is by flashing their naked flesh in tweets to the gawping,
salivating world?
She can surely be a far more powerful
role model to them, and indeed to her own daughter North, by now proving
she can be just as successful in other less prurient ways?The time has come for Kim to consider the unthinkable and actually start putting her clothes back on.’
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