![]() It was in 2010, just three years into Keeping Up With The Kardashians, the reality TV programme about her family, that Kardashian West decided: “I’ll do anything …” – by which she meant put her name and face to anything. “But then I think better of it.” It is what Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt calls “self-fashioning”, the presentation of what and who you are, not as something fixed and private, but as something you yourself created, almost for survival. “There are moments when I think that Kim Kardashian must be the Andy Warhol of our times. I recently asked a prominent magazine editor why Kardashian West’s fame has lasted this long. Such is her enormous power that when establishment intellectuals want to make a knowing point about vulgar popular culture, the name they reach for is hers. (from left) Kris Jenner, Khloé Kardashian, Kim Kardashian West, Kendall Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian and Kylie Jenner. But for Kardashian West, criticism and publicity are probably just one and the same thing. Questions surrounding her bottom (she x-rayed her rear on TV to prove it was real), her bone structure (fillers and Botox, but no surgery, she says) and authenticity (see above) have plagued her career. How can an American woman market her body and lifestyle so skilfully she becomes a global celebrity? How can someone who merely posts images of themselves become one of the most divisive figures in modern times? Much of her undulating value (this month, Forbes put her worth at about $750m) has come from being hated, or envied, or both. You might ask why she is so famous – but perhaps the more interesting question is how. In the post-truth world, where our lives are curated not lived and nothing can be trusted, she manages to be ubiquitous yet strangely unreal her mundanely familiar existence – parenting, bickering, wearing clothes – just happens to be performed to a global public. In the age of platform capitalism, where every person on social media is a product, she is queen. There are few people who define the times in which we live quite like Kardashian West. She now has 190 million Instagram followers, just shy of the population of Nigeria, a total that makes Donald Trump’s 87 million Twitter followers pale in comparison. Naturally, all of this news was diffused through her social media accounts. Kardashian West – mother of four, breaker of the internet – turns 40 this week, and is marking the move into middle age by launching a shapewear line in the UK, appearing on the cover of Grazia magazine alongside an interview about said shapewear, donating $1m to the Armenian relief fund and becoming Martha Stewart for the pandemic generation with a soon-to-be launched interiors line, KKW Home (towels, shower curtains, sponges). Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for ULTA Beauty/KKW Beauty Kardashian West promoting her new makeup range. Maybe the Instagram celebrity with the curated existence hadn’t really been robbed at all and it was all a stunt for yet more publicity – or if she had, perhaps that was the price you paid for violating your privacy for the benefit of a multimillion-dollar business. Doubts over the veracity of the robbery were raised. Immediately, parallels were drawn between the reality TV star and the reclusive writer: here were two women, with polar opposite approaches to their privacy, both targeted for not disclosing the correct amount. The same day Kardashian West was robbed, the pseudonymous novelist Elena Ferrante was allegedly “doxxed” – unmasked – by an Italian journalist. Instead, she said, she would “ video something and then post like 30 minutes later”. After she returned, she refrained from posting images in real time. Kardashian West reacted by temporarily leaving Instagram. ![]() Other celebrities might double down on security following a near-death experience. The socialite daughter of OJ Simpson’s lawyer Robert Kardashian, former assistant to Paris Hilton and reality TV star had amassed more than 85 million followers on Instagram, documenting every part of her life, family, fertility journey and marriage. By this point in her career, Kardashian West was one of the most famous women in the world. ![]()
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