Khloe Kardashian You're the Problem
Last week a mostly unedited photo of Khloe Kardashian was accidentally posted to the Internet. While the photo had some minor adjustments, Kardashian’s body was seemingly untouched. And instead of embracing the natural, Kardashian’s team worked nonstop to pull that image off the web. The controversy doesn’t end there though. When Kardashian finally responded to the controversy, she missed the mark entirely.
In a Twitter post, she said “In truth, the pressure, constant ridicule and judgment my entire life to be perfect and to meet other's standards of how I should look has been too much to bear,” and referenced ridicule she’s received in the past calling her fat and ugly, especially compared to her sisters. The pressure to be perfect though is largely due to the insta-culture Kardashian and her family created. Kardashian even went as far as showing her un-photoshopped body on Instagram but the poor lighting seemed to defeat the purpose entirely. Most of the internet agreed too.
Author Dana Schwartz tweeted, “there's something so viscerally sad to me about khloe kardashian going onto instagram and showing her body in a low-light room because slightly unflattering unedited photos of her leaked.”
Khloe Kardashian can say and do whatever she wants regarding body positivity, but it’s her fault we’re in a culture that is so highly critical of bodies, particularly women bodies.
Ever since Keeping Up With the Kardashians premiered in 2007, they’ve normalized plastic surgery, photoshop, and having the best trainers and nutritionist money can buy. What they have can’t be achieved by ‘working out and eating healthy,’ heck most of what they have can only be achieved by the blur tool on photoshop. Now there’s nothing wrong with fixing your insecurities, but pretending they don’t even exist is super harmful to your mostly young, easily influenced following. Remember when Kylie Jenner got filler and convinced everyone it was just lip liner? Or the countless times the Kardashians promoted waist trainers, detox teas, and appetite suppressants on their Instagrams? Implying that you could look like them if you bought these pseudo-cure-alls when in reality they don’t really look like that anyway.
If the Kardashian family really wanted to take a stand, they wouldn’t pretend to be perfect all the time. They could use this photo as a way to reshape their image and rebrand, especially now that their infamous TV show is coming to an end, but instead, they are trying to pretend it never happened. Until they start using their influence for good, they will continue to not only be part of the problem but a big reason it started in the first place.