Sarah Vine: KUWTK has done more to set back feminism than anything else this century

The reality show has reinforced anti-feminist values for years, writes Sarah Vine. Photo / Getty Images

COMMENT:

So, farewell Keeping Up With The Kardashians. I can't say I shall cry many tears for the end of this toxic slice of televisual inanity.

For 13 years since its debut in 2007, its mix of soft porn, vacuity, venality and general grubbiness has been infecting our culture, seeping into our collective consciousness like a suppurating boil of banality.

A bit over the top? Maybe. But I do really feel very strongly that it has coloured the perceptions of a whole generation of young girls and women, and not in any way favourably. I mean, we had Sex And The City, which, while racy, controversial and attention-seeking was nevertheless a well-thought-out saga of female empowerment, charting the lives of intelligent, sexy women in a man's world. Its protagonists did at least speak in whole sentences.

Keeping Up With The Kardashians, by contrast, is just a bunch of dolly birds stuffed full of facial fillers grabbing as much cash as they can by wiggling their assets at the cameras and manufacturing pointless dramas for the benefit of ratings. It is, perhaps more than any other, responsible for the normalisation of a cultural aesthetic that can, at best, be described as cheap titillation, at worst soft porn.

No doubt its armies of followers will say I'm a jealous old bag who's upset because she can't balance a champagne glass on her backside and "break" the internet. A dried up, bitter and twisted old cow who is crabby because she didn't come up with the idea of filling her face full of collagen and then make hundreds of millions flogging lip-gloss to gullible teenage girls.

I may indeed be all of those things. But I am also the mother of a young daughter, and I think that womankind in general should set our sights slightly higher than squeezing our assets into a rubber catsuit and pouting into a camera. Also that perhaps the best route to fame and fortune is to make use of what's actually inside our craniums instead of inside our bras.

If there is another TV show that exemplifies this lack of ambition, any group of women that has done more to set back the cause of feminism in the 21st century, I can't think of it.

The bitter irony is that the show — and its stand-out star, Kim Kardashian — is endlessly being touted as a beacon of modern female empowerment. A female-led show whose stars command a huge social media following and even bigger pay cheques; a sassy, go-getting "momager" maximising her girls' potential. You know the shtick.

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To our amazing fans - It is with heavy hearts that we’ve made the difficult decision as a family to say goodbye to Keeping Up with the Kardashians. After what will be 14 years, 20 seasons, hundreds of episodes and numerous spin-off shows, we are beyond grateful to all of you who’ve watched us for all of these years – through the good times, the bad times, the happiness, the tears, and the many relationships and children. We’ll forever cherish the wonderful memories and countless people we’ve met along the way. Thank you to the thousands of individuals and businesses that have been a part of this experience and, most importantly, a very special thank you to Ryan Seacrest for believing in us, E! for being our partner, and our production team at Bunim/Murray, who’ve spent countless hours documenting our lives. Our last season will air early next year in 2021. Without Keeping Up with The Kardashians, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who has watched and supported me and my family these past 14 incredible years. This show made us who we are and I will be forever in debt to everyone who played a role in shaping our careers and changing our lives forever. With Love and Gratitude, Kim

A post shared by Kim Kardashian West (@kimkardashian) on Sep 8, 2020 at 2:34pm PDT

But the truth is, they're the opposite. For what the Kardashians realised early on is that you can monetise anything as long as you're willing to strip yourselves of your clothes, your pride and your dignity. Call me old-fashioned but it's a funny kind of empowerment which involves selling your backside, quite literally, to the highest bidder.

It's the way those values — or lack of values — have, thanks to the widespread lionisation of this clan, seeped into the mainstream that I particularly hate.

It is partly because of Kim and her family that the over-sexualisation of young girls is so rife on the internet; it's because of them that online pornography (Kim's rise to fame was prompted by the leaking of a sex tape with a former boyfriend) is considered a bit of a joke by people of my daughter's age; it's thanks to Kim that young girls feel such overwhelming pressure to be seen as sexual objects and why, when they fail to live up to her plastic fantastic standards, they fall into self-loathing.

As an influence, the show has been catastrophic. Kim and her cohort have contributed to a culture whose legacy is a world where staring glassy-eyed into your smartphone while effecting the perfect pout/cleavage angle is the total of many 12-year-old girls' ambitions. It's not only tragic, it's incredibly sad.

There is no putting the genie back in the bottle. Even though the show itself may be ending — as Kim announced on Tuesday — there is no escaping the endless imitations it has spawned, from Love Island to The Only Way Is Essex.

So no, I don't mourn its passing. I won't miss having this family's endless expanses of pneumatic flesh shoved in my face — although given the state of American politics at the moment, who knows? Kim will probably end up as the First Lady, given her husband Kanye West's presidential ambitions. Either way, I doubt we've seen the last of her — more's the pity.