Kim K has turned conspicuous consumption into an art form, writes Allison Pearson. Photo / Getty
Kim K has turned conspicuous consumption into an art form, writes Allison Pearson. Photo / Getty
Opinion
How much do I hate Kim Kardashian? Let me count the ways. I hate her to the width of her preposterous posterior and the snow-globe swelling of her bumptious boobs. How many bees were sacrificed to sting those swollen lips or whales boned to sculpt those hour-glass hips?
For turning conspicuous consumption into an art form, for making Narcissus look only mildly self-obsessed, for saying female empowerment is photographing your own backside (LOL!), for fame without talent, and shopping without end, for being the mirror in which a billion young girls look and find themselves plain, for all these do I loathe thee, Kim.
Of course, you wouldn't wish an armed robbery on anyone. Not even someone daft enough to post a picture on Instagram of themselves wearing a $6 million diamond ring.
Security experts believe that the reality TV star's obsession with social media updates, allowing fans to keep track of her every movement, may have helped the masked gang that ransacked her luxury Paris apartment.
When your whole blingtastic existence is dedicated to showing off how rich you are, then greedy, unscrupulous men trying to get their hands on the bling is regrettable, but hardly surprising.
If you are one of the few people left on Planet Earth lucky enough to be able to ask "Who is Kim Kardashian?"; if, that is, you don't take a newspaper with celebrity pages or have, perhaps, been living in a nuclear bunker on mung beans for the past 10 years, then let me enlighten you.
Kim first bounced to prominence when a sex tape of the pneumatic one and her then boyfriend went viral on the internet. In 2007, her entire family offered themselves up for public delectation in a reality series, Keeping Up With the Kardashians (KUWTK). Should you wish to know what it feels like to have your frontal lobe deep-fried, I can highly recommend it.
Kim with her sister Kourtney and designer Azzedine Alaia at a private dinner in Paris. Photo / Getty
Kim is the second daughter of Robert Kardashian, who was one of OJ Simpson's lawyers during his notorious trial and acquittal. In retrospect, OJ was the perfect appetiser for the Kardashians.
With frightening speed, the question of whether the football player was a wife-murderer became secondary to public fascination with his flight from justice, in a white Ford Bronco, played out in real time.
It was must-watch TV, and if you could sense public morality becoming detached from its moorings as crowds cheered for "The Juice", well, that was a small price to pay for great entertainment and huge ratings.
Literally anything is legitimate fodder for KUWTK. That includes the gender reassignment of Bruce Jenner (now known as Caitlyn), who is Kim's stepfather/mother, but may be having second thoughts. The success of the show, which is in its 12th season, has led to numerous spin-offs - Kourtney and Kim Take Miami, Kourtney and Khloe Take the Hamptons.
Producers must be rubbing their hands at the prospect of Kim Taken Hostage in Paris. In fact, such is the cynicism surrounding allegedly fabricated "reality" scenes that critics have dared to suggest the Paris heist was faked to grab attention. Surely not!
But I digress. All of this would just be a storm in an E-cup, were it not for the fact that Kim Kardashian has become a phenomenally influential figure for young women of my daughter's generation.
Approaching her 36th birthday, Kim has 84 million followers on Instagram, 48 million on Twitter and is a walking, pouting product placement.
If a Kardashian wears it, girls buy it, even the "waist-training corset" designed to bully a normal female shape into the cartoon character that is Kim. Put it this way, it was not a huge surprise when Kim's first book, a collection of selfies by Kim of Kim, was entitled Selfish.
If Descartes had lived to see Kim Kardashian, he would have had to update his philosophical proposition, cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). The ontological entity that is Kim declares: "I am on TV, therefore I am."
Kim has 84 million followers on Instagram, 48 million on Twitter and is a walking, pouting product placement. Photo / Getty
Why should those of us who are older, wiser and not on Instagram give a damn about this vacuous Betty Boop? Because of disturbing surveys like the one published by the UK Girl Guides this week, which says that girls as young as seven feel under pressure to have "the perfect body".
Two-fifths of girls between the ages of seven and ten think they "need to lose weight" at a time when plump little infant bodies need strength to stretch and bloom. Kicking in younger and younger, those gnawing feelings of inadequacy soon harden into self-loathing.
Over the past five years, there has been a horrifying increase in the number of girls, aged from 17 to 21, who say they are dissatisfied with their appearance. It was 36 per cent in 2011; today, it's half of our lovely young women who can't stand the way they look.
Make no mistake, it is invidious comparisons on social media and the cult of selfie-taking that are driving the epidemic of mental health problems among adolescents. When a quarter of 16- to 24-year-old females in England are depressed, anxious and cutting and gouging their flawed selves, you know that we are living in a desperately sick society.
Lately, that sickness has reached my own home. I would say more, but it would mean heaving my heart into my mouth, and I'm not ready to do that. Besides, it's not my tale to tell. The glorious young woman whose story it is says she will tell it one day, when she is better: when she feels beautiful inside and out.
I long for that day to come. When millions of girls will turn away from the hologram of perfection projected by preening narcissists. When they don't go on holiday and digitally alter their bikini photos to look skinny and busty at the same time.
Just before the robbery in Paris, Kim Kardashian told half a billion Twitter followers: "Think I'm gonna wear no makeup today to the Balenciaga show." Pictures that day show Kim with perfectly filled-in brows, impossibly long black lashes, flawless complexion and what seems an awful lot like lip gloss. And this is "no makeup", which vulnerable teenagers will look upon and despair.
How do I hate thee, Kim Kardashian? You and others like you who have imprisoned the most liberated generation of young women who ever lived in a distorting hall of mirrors. The selfie is not a substitute for a self. Reality TV is a lie. Waists do not need training.
Kim Kardashian had $15m of jewellery stolen from her. What has been taken from the girls who try and fail to copy her?
