![]() ![]() The ‘exotic’ white woman and cultural appropriation Even after Keeping Up with the Kardashians ends and the family moves on to their new deal to create content for Disney and Hulu, this legacy will remain. The Kardashian-Jenner look is ubiquitous: Heavily contoured makeup, dramatically curvy bodies and plumped lips have had cyclical moments of popularity, but they owe much of their mainstream favor in recent years to the wide influence of the sisters. By contrast, Kim has explicitly benefitted from her much-talked-about figure, tapping into an audience that sees her as no ordinary white woman, but instead as an exotic and interesting one.īetween their loyal viewership on television and massive social media presences (Kim was the most followed person on Instagram in 2015 and currently has the 6th biggest account with 227 million followers), the family blazed a trail for a new model of celebrity: the influencer. Baartman was paraded semi-nude, her posterior exhibited as a curio of sorts for European audiences that could, for a price, touch her body-a sobering symbol of the exploitation and degradation that Black women and their bodies have suffered for centuries. ![]() In this problematic comparison lie the troubling roots of the obsession with the Kardashian aesthetic. This outsize fascination was perhaps best embodied by her controversial 2014 Paper magazine cover, shot by Jean-Paul Goude, where her bare bottom is flanked by the line, “Break the Internet Kim Kardashian.” On social media and in numerous think pieces, the cover drew comparisons to Saartjie Baartman, the 19th-century South African woman known as the “Hottentot Venus.” That the opener of the watershed reality show-which ends June 10 after 20 seasons-centered on the family’s fixation on Kim’s rear foreshadowed the now-ubiquitous public obsession with her body, and particularly that specific feature of it. ![]()
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