Kim Kardashian is still promoting her book of selfies, Selfish, and she keeps signing on to these relatively prestigious gigs as part of the promotional trail. Last night, she appeared at the Commonwealth Club of California, in a talk that was moderated by Judge LaDoris Cordell. People were mad. The Commonwealth Club of California is a venue that has previously hosted talks with people like Ronald Reagan, FDR and Martin Luther King. And now Kim. The club’s Facebook blew up with all the people complaining about Kim. But at the end of the day, Kim still did the talk. Some highlights from her discussion, via Page Six:
Her big reveal: She was wearing maternity Spanx under her black designer dress to conceal cellulite, not her pregnant belly.
Explaining her popularity: “I really do love social media. I credit it to a lot of my career. My career is based on openness, openness and honesty.”
Her social media followers: “Maybe it’s the bikini selfies. I think I definitely overshare, but I’m really engaged.”
Whether it’s realistic for women to be successful in a man’s world: “There is this generation of young people — girls — who are beautiful but don’t have a strong work ethic. People sometimes think that with looks things will be easy, But I just encourage people to put in the work.”
Whether she’s okay with objectifying herself: “Yes. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think there’s power in that and I think I have the control to put out what I want so even if I’m objectifying myself, I feel good about it.”
What it’s like to raise biracial children: Kardashian shared making the difficult decision not to engage with a fellow airline passenger who screamed profanity and racial comments at her while she was traveling with her daughter. West “is very vocal about racial issues,” she said. “Our communication, I think, will be really helpful for our children.”
Eh, it is what it is. I never feel weird about objectifying Kim Kardashian because that’s really her raison d’être. To complain about being objectified would be, for Kim, complaining about her fame and accomplishments. I even like the shade Kim threw about the beautiful girls with no work ethic – and I do think she’s right. There are a lot of pretty girls who think “being pretty” is the beginning and the end of their accomplishments.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Of course she does. It’s all’s she’s got!
“My career is based on openness, openness and honesty.”
“Openness, openness” she’s referring to her legs, right?
An “openness” for each leg.
“Honesty”= her screen performance with Ray J.
HA! XD
She says she feels good about objectifying herself, but that’s not completely true. Or at least she doesn’t feel so great about the results – remember her first pregnancy and how cruel people were because she insisted on dressing like a sausage and she looked awful? (I may have been one of those people, btw). She didn’t feel so great about that.
On a completely shallow note, she looks very pretty in the pink coat and dress.
I really love that coat.
Agreed. Plus, isn’t it a little dangerous for Kim to be the one telling the group of young girls who apparently have no work ethic to “put in the work”? IMO her version of putting in the work is on the wrong side of questionable, to say the least.
Excellent point.
Am I missing something here? I have never seen her hard at work on her shows… I don’t understand where she is coming from at all.
She puts on the Spanx, laces up the gladiator stilettos, and gets on the plane to Cannes or Dubai. She shows up.
She strips down, oils up, turns her rump to the camera and smiles. She shows up.
Over and over and over, she shows up. Not hung over, no bags under her eyes, Kim shows up.
Yes.
Searching for porn? She shows up.
Have a camera? She shows up.
Have an envelope opening? She shows up.
@Allie May – I said the same thing!!! These women KILL ME. I’ll say this much, their mother does put in work and it is only thanks to her that they’ve made it this far. That woman has dedicated her life to being completely shameless, to the point of being pathetic, on the hunt for any menial thing for her children to shill for fame and fortune. I’m sorry, maybe Kylie gets to laugh all the way to the bank, but I can’t help but roll my eyes that she is seriously selling weaves, and I feel the same way about Rob with his socks, and back when Kim and Khloe were selling that BS weight loss crap that they got sued over.
What really bugs me about these women and why I’ll never ever take any of them seriously, is that they’re always going on and on about their incredible work ethic when none of them really do any work. Getting on a private jet to meet with people who create your brand and do all the work for you IS NOT work. These women do nothing but promote stuff that normal, every day people with amazing work ethics create for them. Yet somehow they can never find it in themselves to thank these people. Kim has never once when being lauded for her “incredible app” taken the time to say, “I really can’t take the credit for this. I didn’t create it and I don’t know anything about technology.” This woman isn’t sitting in a lab somewhere creating fragrances with a perfumer. She isn’t drawing designs for clothing that she puts her name on. She has NOTHING to do with the process for pretty much ANYTHING she takes credit for other than flying around the world promoting it, answering questions about it, and giving the final OK before it hits the market. It’s such a crock of shit that anyone actually calls them business women.
I actually like what she said here…………………. She made sense.
Good God!!! What’s wrong with me? If you all are preparing to take me to the mental institution, please at least let me take my shoe collection. I want to look good as I’m walking down the halls and I haven’t gotten around to wearing some of them.
I will join you. A Kardashian making sense is apocalypse territory.
Ha!
This made me smile, and I’ve had a terrible week. So thank you.
I was sent to a mental, uh, facility, and they let me take my motorcycle jacket. It really did help!
Glad to help! I hope you were treated well and are doing better 🙂 And I’m sure you look stylish in your jacket no matter the location!
this outfit doe.
i’ll give it to her on this one. its cute.
major coat envy!
She looks really pretty in these pictures!
West might have been “very vocal about race issues” once upon a time but i don’t get that from him anymore. Didn’t he say racism was a thing of a past or something to that effect a few months ago? As for Kim, well, if she really was open, open and honest, she wouldn’t try to hide all the surgeries and whatnot. Ditto to the rest of her family.
SPEAK ON IT!!!! Kanye got the money and validation from those who use to shun him and now he has checked out the game completely.
He just recently (as of a few days ago) said that people are so shocked by him because the public is not used to Black people having strong opinions AND actually voicing them. Basically, he’s not playing the respectability game and that’s the part that shocks people, more than the content of his words. I also agreed with him here as well. So, let me just pack my bags as I’m wheeled off. (Please see my above comment for reference.)
Where did he say that @HH? All I can find is his usual “It’s my opinion, and I’m always right cuz I speak the truth for 90% of the people, but people act shocked even though I speak for all the truths for all the people” garble, garble, garble…
That might be true, and i definitely agree to a certain extent that he doesn’t play respectability politics, but he’s able to do that because of the clout and standing he has in society. Not every black person can afford to do what he does, which is why racism is still a very real, very present thing in many people’s lives. To dismiss that is callous.
@Amber – Here’s the post:
http://www.celebitchy.com/434720/kanye_west_on_his_moms_death_if_i_had_never_moved_to_la_shed_be_alive/
Bless your self obsessed heart Kim, bless it!!
OMG.. really! Bless her heart for all she does… haha!
But what I loved was this quote:
“Her big reveal: She was wearing maternity Spanx under her black designer dress to conceal cellulite, not her pregnant belly….”
Okay. Does anyone else see the humor/irony of the fact… she would not have cellulite to hide, had she not pumped fat back into her body. To have that doctor made, posterior end?
And I have been saying it for weeks. That she was having to wear a girdle… a real one. That is not some simple piece of Spanx, keeping all that packed down. Nothing will smooth out ugly lumpy issues… like a true girdle will.
is it just me or does she not look at ALL pregnant?????
Unless she’s carrying the baby in her butt, I don’t see it either.
So far not really, but she is also wearing big coats to hide her body. She looked pregnant in the grey dress she wore recently. I’d love to know where the hell Kim is that she needs to wear a coat. This outfit is cute and her coats for the most part are gorgeous, but it’s July. It’s so crazy to me the lengths that she’ll go to in order to avoid giving up the skin tight clothing. She’d rather walk around in a trench coat in the summertime than put on clothes that fit.
While she knows she is objectifying herself, she has no clue that these little girls who think they will get by on her looks is partially because of her – especially those who follow her on social media. As far as the airplane incident, it was never proven that it happen. The story came from “sources” inside her camp.
Thank you! I was like “Who does she think these types of girls follow?”
If these girls idolize Kim Kardashian, it’s their parents’ fault. not hers.
Yes, not a single reliable corroborating tweet on Twitter, not anything anywhere for such an incident in an airplane full of people. Nobody got escorted off the plane, as they do nowadays with people going on such rampages. As though nobody would notice such a thing. The idea that Kim was sleeping next to Nori was a tad far-fetched also- babies are messy, Kim hates mess, the kid would have been with the nanny.
She just appropriated a story from the news a while before about a mother who really did experience something like this. She’s still recycling it.
Another oddity is simply that with her complexion and how she often darkens her skin further – I doubt people would automatically assume she was white if she was with a black baby. They might think that she was mixed, but it’s not as though she’s a pale redhead.
Is that a puffy shirt that Kanye is wearing?
We know you like it, Kim. Just don’t complain later. Objects have no feelings, anyway.
Clearly no one knows what “objectification” means. Not Kim, not Chris Pratt, not anyone else who gladly claims to love it or practice it themselves.
So guys, if you’re reading this, here’s a quick lesson for you.
When you’re “objectified”, you’re reduced to an object. You’re dehumanized. You’re perceived and treated as a THING that exists for the visual and sexual pleasure of others. Your individuality is ignored, your autonomy isn’t acknowledged, and you’re not respected or valued as a human being. You’re a one-dimensional fantasy, not a three-dimensional person. If you’re “objectifying yourself”, you’re treating yourself as an object.
Actually… now that I think about it… that’s probably exactly what she means. She DOES treat herself as an object. She doesn’t even value her emotional expressions (e.g. smiling) over the way she appears to others. She lets her husband use her as a dress-up doll, and she treats her daughter the same way. Maybe she’s totally cool with an existence that’s 100% external — she sure seems to encourage her younger sisters to seek the same — but most human beings actually have independent thoughts and feelings that make them unique and worthy of respect. These human beings can be sexual and attractive and enjoy wearing makeup and appealing to others… but that’s not the same as objectification.
SIGH.
You’ve enlightened me about this subject and I think you’re spot on about the Kardashian frame of mind.
Thank you for that. I’m glad I could actually contribute something meaningful to this conversation. Sometimes I think I’m doing more harm than good by feeding a demand for Kardashian stories. But on Celebitchy, these posts are also opportunities to get a little deeper and unpack the vapid stupidity. I really respect that.
Awesome comment, Brittney B. I love the way you explained that. This actually makes me pity Kim more than ever.
I appreciate that.
Actually, I found myself pitying her as I typed it too. She really doesn’t think she has any value beyond her sexual appeal. I don’t think we should shame her for “getting her start with a sex tape”… but we should DEFINITELY shame her for teaching kids that it’s okay to be dehumanized and prioritize “beauty” (an impossible, plastic version of it at that!) over education or compassion.
I remember your comments on that Pratt thread. You explained things so perfectly, once again.
*blushing*
Thank you, Kitten. I just throw words at the screen and hope something sticks… glad they did. It’s just such a dangerous concept to perpetuate… on par with “feminism = man hating”. I wish there were more public figures undoing the damage done by this woman and her ilk.
@Brittney B: Thank you for pointing that out. You’re right- a lot of people, whether they’re celebrities, regular folks, MRAs, or feminists, don’t seem to know what the term objectify means, and use the word ‘objectify’ when what they really mean is ‘sexualize’. Most people don’t realize that there’s an important difference between the two, and that one of them (objectification) is a negative thing while the other isn’t, depending on the context; you can have one without the other. People use ‘objectification’ as a catch-all term for any and every time a person is portrayed in a way that’s sexy, sexual, rauchy, revealing, or attractive. That misuse of the term is a problem for quite a few reasons, one of them being that it dilutes the term to the point where certain other forms objectification- especially those that don’t involve making someone look sexy- aren’t even recognized as objectification.
Love your comment. I would add only that analyzing objectification, especially in this case, also involves noting its fluid relationship with (literal) commercial commodification.
Personal take: she makes more bank & is safer the way she does it than she would from the street corner.
I knew a woman (Ivy grad, well-versed in feminist studies everything) who proudly declared she felt ’empowered’ by her new post-grad strip club job at a famous joint in San Fran; part of her spiel involved ‘taking the reins and control of her own objectification’ and ‘defining the terms of her body’s dialogue with the viewer as the viewed.’ The women who worked there could ‘pick their own costume personas’ and decide just how much to take off as men plied quarters from several private viewing booths to raise a shutter from a window. The men were in shadow, unable to be identified from the center ‘dance’ floor.
After a few months, she quit because she said it felt ‘dehumanizing’ and ‘degrading.’ I would add that she seemed genuinely surprised by that.
One interesting aspect of this to me was that she went on to ‘consciously objectify’ herself in performance art that was surprisingly good and genuinely poignant – drawing upon her previous ideas and experiences. Similar ‘act’ – different stage, different audience…? Hmmm.
Thanks for sharing that. It’s definitely telling that she was surprised by the dehumanizing aspect… and that she went on to use her experiences in a valuable way. THAT makes all the difference.
Stripping and sex work are legitimate ways to make a living, and I won’t assume someone’s damaged or demeaned because of it, but until we flip the male gaze and dismantle our objectification tendencies, the women who work in these industries will suffer like your friend did.
Kim might think she’s taking the reins too, that the results of her own self-objectification are limited to monetary gain and better self esteem. In fact the opposite is true… people now feel entitled to scrutinize every inch of her body, even when it’s in the process of creating a human being. That happens to other women too, of course, and it’s not her fault… but the more emphasis she puts on her external appearance, the more she feels the need to tweak and defend and cover up and lie. THAT is telling.
Basically, the more she equates her identity with her looks, the more power she gives to those who will zoom in and point out her cellulite, etc. She tweaks her face in order to appease those people; if she were empowered by it, she’d grow more and more comfortable in her own skin. The opposite is happening, because it’s not empowerment. She is an object for public consumption, and she views herself that way too.
ENCORE!
The Kardashian women are always touting their incredible work ethic, and of course, it is always met with “but what do you actually do?” To be honest, I 100% stand by the theory that these women over exaggerate what they accomplish and how much of their personal time is put into the things that have their name on it or their “brand.”
We see a lot–granted not all, that they do on their show. There is a TON of down time in their lives. I don’t consider getting on a private jet to fly to another country just to sit down at some conference for a few hours and talk about how wonderful the new fragrance is that someone else created for you to show any incredible work ethic, because honestly, it really isn’t work. I also don’t think it shows incredible work ethic to meet with the buyers to give the final OK on the clothing that they’ve already spent their work days picking out for you to pretend you did it all yourself for your clothing line. I saw the episode where Kim went to meet with the people who created her video game, which she contributes nothing to except I believe vocals (?), and these people who put this app together for her and earned her millions stood up and gave her a standing ovation.
In the early days, they ran their own stores which I realize is probably unrealistic now since they’re so famous and the stores would be absolutely mobbed with people just trying to get a look at them, but my point is, their lives are 1,000 times easier than they pretend they are. There have been tons of people who have started clothing lines and had to do all the work themselves for a long time before they could afford to hire anyone. There have been people who worked hard to create their own apps and had to promote them on a normal salary. They do have a brand, absolutely, but it is only thanks to the hard work of everyone who keeps their brand going. These women are really only promoters.
What bothers me is that these women have real people with normal lives working full time to create their brand. These are the people who are working hard and have the amazing work ethic, and yet we NEVER hear the Kardashians ever stopping to say, “Thanks so much to our buyers. Where would we be without you?!” “Thanks to the perfumer who created this perfume I’m shilling right now” “Thanks to the people who made this app for me, since I have absolutely zero experience or ability to do it on my own”
These women take credit for everything, and the most that they actually do is travel and sit down at meetings where information is already prepared for them and they give the final say and then get to go off to do their daily pap stroll while everyone else who got them where they are has to go back to work.
Nothing they promote is their idea. Someone else comes up with the idea and uses the Kardashian name for promotion. They don’t even wear “their” own clothing line.
She’s officially the dumbest person on Earth. First off, bitch, you have no career… and if she does, what’s her profession called? And if she liked prancing around in ridiculous outfits that show off her exaggerated ass, she wouldn’t be objectifying herself persay…this woman needs to get off this planet stat. The world doesn’t need more hobags thinking that objectifying themselves is a good thing. And saying that shows how sad and insecure she must be. Sad.
I feel like Kim’s “communication” about biracial issues with her children leaves a lot to be desired. To me, all the Kardashian-Jenners just objectify black men/black culture for the same thing and use them as another vehicle of controversy. (Kylie and Khloe are the worst perpatrators, but Kim is not far behind).
It’s little things like being on their phones during that moment of silence for Ferguson at the award show, that very stereotypical vine Kylie and Kendall did, always slicking back North’s curls (which is not good for her hair and hurts. Know from experience), and the fact that they love black culture and features yet they have no problem calling people “ghetto and street bullies.”
Ugh. I just see a lot of people like Kim and they love walking the walk, but always seem to disappear when it’s time to talk the talk.
I completely agree with you!! It is so obvious that these women are interested in being with black men because they think it makes them look cool somehow. I’ve always found it disgusting that these women are so ready to act like they’re above Blac Chyna, Amber Rose and Trina despite the fact that they run in the same circles and hang out with the same people and have the same men in common. Why do they think they’re above them? Because they have more money and they’re white. That is the only reason. These women all have an obsession with acting “hood.” I saw a recent episode where Khloe got into an argument with Kim and she says to the camera, “you really wanna go there? Because Khlo-money will come out and I’ll take my earrings off and put the vaseline on my face.” It’s just so damn pathetic and childish. You’re from the suburbs, you grew up privileged and you’ve probably never been in a physical fight in your life.. please stop. They want to date black men because they believe it gives them some sort of street cred, but they clearly don’t respect black culture and are very quick to act like they’re above the people they associate with.
I agree about North’s hair as well– I really don’t understand why they can’t just let her hair be natural. It is always completely slicked down or wrapped up in super tight mini buns. Kim has the nerve to say in this article that she’s always liked a “certain kind of look.” Is that why she has an issue with her daughter’s ethnic hair? How will she react if her daughter or son looks African American? For a woman who is obsessed with having a tiny nose, how would she feel if her son or daughter grows up to have a nose that looks like Kanye’s? North is light skinned, but what if their son is dark like Kanye? I’m really curious to see how Kim will react later in life, being as superficial as she is, to her own beauty ideals not being passed on to her children. Will she encourage all the plastic surgery she has had?
Khloe is the absolute worst. There were some photos of Khloe with the rapper Game posted on Radar a few weeks ago where she has red bandana tied on her forehead standing on the hood of car with her fingers twisted like she is throwing up gang signs. For a privileged white girl, pretending to be down with the Bloods is fun but for other young people, wearing the wrong color can get you killed. I wish the Kardashians would go away.
It’s so ironic that they are all so into black men and black culture yet zero words or statements from their mouths on #blacklivesmatter or any of the other serious issues that have affected black people lately.
Everything but the burden.
Kim just shaded probably every single fan she has with that “you can’t be just pretty and not have to work” crap. That is why those young girls follow and admire her! She does NOTHING but trade on her looks, as bizarre as they’ve become, and had someone else pulling her strings like the fembot she’s become. Oh how inspiring and hard to do! And HONESTY??? Honesty? Girl come ON! Hahahahahahahaha!
This is the same girl that married a rich gut at the age of 19 and was a housewife for 4 years before she divorced him. Who is she kidding?
How can she say, with a straight face, (okay, altered face) that crap about a generation of beautiful girls with no work ethic….. ummm. your sister, Kyloose…… um trying to be her version of pretty….. and no discernable work ethic except to post selfies……. geez, do you listen to your, like, self, Kim….
She is truly illiterate. Says she’s a feminist but then says she’s ok being objectified?? Why does she even try to talk? She makes me mad, she just keeps gender equality twenty steps back. Idiot shut up and push your butt out some more.
What “work ethic” does she have? This girl could never do a real 9 to 5 job. She had her mother do all the real work for her and pimp the sh*t out of her. She just shows up and gets paid. Her sisters even admitted Kim NEVER does any work regarding their Dash stores.
She is just so clueless. God help her poor children.