The staff around The Statesman seem to have the misguided (though not completely off-base) notion that because I have a decent knowledge of tabloid happenings, I would have a strong opinion about Kim Kardashian’s bubble-butt. It is a subject that needs no introduction, and if you are unfamiliar with it, there is a tight space under a rock somewhere that is missing its occupant.
People like to throw shade at the Kardashians for just about everything. We deconstruct the things they do daily. We even do this to things they did not say or did not do. I searched without success on a news-aggregate site to try and find a day within the past three months that they didn’t appear in the media.
The Kardashians defy the media theory of overexposure, the most famous example of this theory in action being Paris Hilton. It is often explained that her decline in the public eye was the result of simply being in the media too often. We got sick of her and we stopped reading about her. The irony is that Kim Kardashian was riding her coattails at the time, and like the alien she recently played on “American Dad,” rose from the socialite’s ashes to become the Kim Kardashian we all love to hate today.
I do not think the story here is about Kim Kardashian’s perfectly glazed buttcheeks on display of Paper magazine’s cover this month. This is not something the public has not seen before. Her biggest claim to fame is a “One Night in Paris” style sex-tape with Ray J. Even more specifically, it is only a handful of seasons back that we watched Kim cry on her phone to her mother about being exposed in a W Magazine cover shoot, subsequently promising herself that she would never pose nude for a magazine again. I think the story here is that we all care about it as if it was the first time.
It is easy for the public to dismiss the lot of them as talentless hacks. In the traditional sense, it is true. The fact remains however that the family, and Kim especially, have a talent that most pseudo-celebrities would give their left butt fat for. They keep us coming back for more. “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” first aired over seven years ago. They are still E!’s most-watched program, harnessing millions of viewers per episode. This is not the Illuminati’s hand at work. The people control the programming. There is no question that if we stopped tuning in, stopped clicking on the tabloid links, that they would be gone faster than the Ebola scare.
Perhaps the secret is the family dynamic. Even when one of their popularity wanes, another comes in to take their place. Rob got fat, Kourtney is pregnant again, Kendall is on the runway, Kim got married. One publishes a book, while another one gets divorced. Everyone has a favorite, and everyone watches.
The enduring success may be the family, but none of them would be in our peripheral if our focus wasn’t on Kim. The derriere that sparked a thousand headlines. Sir Mix-A-Lot’s modern muse. She has us exactly where she wants us, staring at her rump on the internet, the money making machine that is the Kardashian dynasty slowly orbiting around its greatest star.
