By Morgin Goldberg ‘15, Guest Writer

Kim Kardashian has been the object of our intrigue for years now: we have questioned her as a mother, (perhaps grudgingly) acknowledged her success as a business woman, criticized her as a celebrity (“what is she famous for, again?”), celebrated her as a sex symbol, heralded her as a feminist icon, and we have blamed her for America’s marital failures and moral demise.

When we see images like this Paper magazine photo shoot a few weeks ago, we don’t know quite how to feel about Kim Kardashian, but, odds are, she represents something probably deplorable about our values, our conception of beauty and sexuality, and our increasingly superficial society. Right?

Women, Kim Kardashian included, are trapped in this paradox: we are placed in a culture that primarily values us for our looks. We are taught to be hyper-concerned with our faces and our bodies: that is, we should probably hate them to some extent, no matter our attractiveness. We are placed in an economy that profits from this discontent, one that seeks to capitalize on our insecurities and sell us creams, serums, pills, and powders to fix the problem of insecurity that they have created.

Make no mistake, this is a woman problem: has it ever occurred to you why men look okay without make-up while women don’t? Why make-up for men isn’t even a thing? Why presumably gender-neutral products, like skin care, are still marketed solely to girls?

Women are supposed to be ornamental, decorative, pretty to look at. Men have more important things to be concerned with because other qualities –  intelligence, leadership, confidence – will be valued in them. These qualities will be noted in girls but secondarily. We are placed in a world that will enforce these expectations at every turn, in our external and internal worlds, until it is our truth.

And yet, a woman concerned with make-up, with dieting, with “woman’s interest” magazines, is considered superficial. Ditzy. Trivial. How can we give positions of power to women when they are so shallow? More than that, how can we even take seriously a woman who spends too much time on her make-up? The very constraints placed upon us are then used to deny us legitimacy, agency, and a voice.

Women who know this, myself included, plan to strike a balance: to dress well and lead well, to never seem to care too much or too little (as to threaten anyone by being too subversive), to enter the professional world knowing our precarious place.

Kim Kardashian takes a different approach: she capitalizes at being the very best at beautiful, at sexy, at constructed femininity. She does not try to strike a balance; she does not attempt to be viewed as intellectual or thoughtful or as anything but attractive. And, at selling her beauty, no one is succeeding more than Kim. Kim consents to the commodification of her image and her body that society will place upon her with or without her consent (as it does to every famous woman). This photo shoot, as well as Kim’s repeated media presence and fame, creates discomfort and ambiguity because it shows a woman so clearly consenting to, and creating a career of, her own commodification—a subversion of expectations so profound that it is almost baffling.

So, what then, is the issue with Kim Kardashian’s photo shoot?

Some people point to her new identity as a mother as a condition that should now preclude her from being sexual or otherwise presenting herself in the way she always has. In a world where a week after birth, magazines are reporting on “losing the baby weight,” why is this the case?  The female body is sexualized in motherhood, in illness—“save the boobies” for breast cancer, in adolescence: Kim Kardashian will determine for herself when, if ever, the commodification of her body will end.

Yet, there is an issue with this photo shoot. In attempting to police the perceived immorality of her displays of sexuality, we miss the point. The image of a woman balancing champagne on her butt is rooted in historical and modern racism and oppression of the black female body: this particular image was recreated by photographer Jean-Paul Goude, a man who exploited his black girlfriend in a series of racist photographs for a book called Jungle Fever. He, however, did not come up with this idea but instead was inspired by a woman called Saartjie Baartman who was, in the 19^th century, objectified and exploited as a freak-show exhibit and made to do such demeaning “tricks” for a white audience. It is true that Kim herself was probably completely unaware of this and that is part of the problem.

Turning a blind-eye to racial implications and context in the pursuit of being “edgy” is deplorable and absolutely worthy of criticism; in fact, the erasure of black women’s voices and perspectives is a failing of the feminist movement, historically and currently. This is what we should be focusing on when we criticize these pictures, not the amount of clothes Kim has on.

You can view the controversial photos here.

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