The Kardashian Matriarchy: Just A Manicure Away From the Amazons

“Don’t you think it’s astounding that Kim’s figure has changed the body standard for an entire generation?” my friend mused about reality TV’s lead Kardashian family daughter. It’s true; in the ’90s, heroin chic reigned supreme, making millennials particularly susceptible to an impossibly thin ideal, whereas, now, “slim thick,” as popularized by the Kardashians, is the order of the day. Still unrealistic and, as some argue, a far cry from “body neutrality,” the slim thick standard, which favors small waists but large hips and thighs, brings us one step closer to acceptance of curvy female bodies that, literally, take up space in a world in which women have, historically, tended to make themselves small.Yet, it’s not just the Kardashians’ bodies that occupy our social media feeds, magazines, and television screens; it’s also their unspoken but unapologetic and transformative balking of familial, racial, and gender-based conventions that has established its sprawl in the American mindscape. Without a stated mission but with the loudest of campaigns, the family has utterly re-engineered today’s image of female success.While Kardashian women do thunderously announce and celebrate their engagements and weddings, they just as often break those commitments, prioritizing their own mental health, independence, and peace of mind over society’s long-coveted title of “wife,” dauntlessly bearing — or, more often, eschewing — the public’s judgment of divorce. As it stands, only one of the six Kardashian and Jenner women featured on Hulu’s eponymous show is married, though not to her children’s father, and five of them are unwed or divorced mothers who, if the mood strikes, wear impossibly large diamond rings on whichever fingers they like.What’s more, it’s not just that the bonds and bounds of marriage are optional for KarJenner women; it’s that men are the interchangeable and often less interesting incidental characters in their lives. Those who have watched as their businesses, families, bodies, reputations, and relationships change over a tumultuous 15 television seasons can’t ignore the only constant: sisterhood. These women provide one another’s sole sense of permanence; they are the guaranteed and eternal loves of each other’s lives. There is a powerful way in which Kardashian women operate — somehow simultaneously brazen and airy — that is demonstrated no more apparently than in the structuring of their families. Three of the KarJenner daughters have biracial children and nearly all of them have blended families, not to mention that the Kardashians and Jenners, themselves, are a blended family. Certainly atypical, what gives their renegade version of the all-American family its legitimacy and staying power is the fact that the Kardashians barely acknowledge their situation as one resultant from brave or defiant decision making. Through their lack of attention to what should make them marginal, these women elevate what were once less-than-ideal family circumstances to some sort of unsullied empowered matriarchy paragon, forcing America to accept the terms of their new Utopia. If the Kardashians take multiracial and blended families for granted, so must we.Beyond their redefinition of the American home, each of the KarJenner women stands behind a thriving makeup, clothing, or liquor empire. Dripping diamonds and sporting unreal looking hairdos and lacquered talons, they sashay about their offices with every bit as much boss energy as more classically attired and behaved corporate leaders. While it’s tempting to dismiss the women as mere figureheads, it’s hard to ignore the numbers. Their businesses, among them Skims, Kylie Cosmetics and Good American, are worth $3.2 billion, $1.2 billion, and $1.6 billion, respectively, and their Instagram followings range from 49 million to 355 million.With such sizable and rapt audiences, these women are in positions of inestimable power to effect social and political change. Kim, for her part, while pursuing a law degree, has taken up the issue of criminal justice reform, lobbying for overall improvement and early releases and stays of executions for individual inmates whose stories she shares via social media. Her efforts are documented in a recently released film, “Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project.”Like most reality TV stars, the KarJenner women often disappoint me with their fixation on life’s shallows. Money, beauty, fame, and self-indulgence seem to be the focus of far too many hours of their cushy lives. On the other hand, the Kardashians are passionate about faith and family, and they’re offering society a fresh pathway in the thorny experience of womanhood. Dolled up or not, bejeweled or bare, in business or at home, in matrimony or singledom, the message is clear: Do whatever and be whomever you want, and watch the world rally around your choices when you don’t accommodate other people’s discomfort and questions with explanations.

The Kardashian Matriarchy: Just A Manicure Away From the Amazons

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