Tapioca pudding. Goats. Watching PBS documentaries about the British Royal Family. The color pink. Being a huge fan of Kim Kardashian. These are things that I have been embarrassed to publicly admit that I like for fear of being ridiculed or judged.
But this week, I’ve decided to embrace all parts of myself. And that means admitting to a couple million of my fellow college students that hey, I love the Kardashians. I’m a Kim fan in particular, but I think they are all amazing. And I’m going to tell you why.
I am sure you’ve heard that Kim Kardashian posted some nudes on the internet a few weeks back. You couldn’t have missed it; people had LOTS to say. And on International Women’s Day, Kim wrote this amazing piece about the whole thing on her website. Why is this relevant here? Because I am going to talk about why I think Kim Kardashian is actually a good role model. (I can feel the haters spitting with rage now!)
Bear with me: I am not saying I think people should necessarily aspire to make sex tapes and appear on reality shows. But TBH, I don’t think those things were Kim Kardashian’s dreams as a young girl either. And even if they were, it’s irrelevant now; she’s actually about SO MUCH MORE than those things.
I admire Kim for many things, but first and foremost for her confidence. She doesn’t care what anyone says or thinks about her and completely embodies the phrase “you do you”. This is SO important for women. How many people do you know that are 100% openly themselves and not embarrassed by any part of their personality? DEFINITELY NOT ME. I feel embarrassed about how much I love tapioca pudding! (Some explanation: At some point, everyone seemed to decide it was an old lady thing and that it’s disgusting, so I decided to tell people I didn’t like it either.) It’s my favorite dessert, guys, and I lied about it for years! Kim puts every aspect of herself out there to the entire world. That takes major guts.
It’s hard to have confidence in yourself sometimes. It’s a journey that we all go through as adults. And with the Kardashians, I think it’s pretty freakin’ admirable that they’re so confident… especially when everyone in the world wants to dissect and criticize every last thing that they do. Whenever people talk about the Kardashians, people salivate at the thought of criticizing them. It’s an amazing transformation: Perfectly normal people morph into ravenous hyenas at the mere mention of a family that has literally done them no wrong. I hope I can someday feel 1/10th as comfortable and confident in my skin as the K’s seem to be.
So that’s the first part: being empowered. Kim is a role model because she encourages others, like me, to also be confident in themselves. This doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with sex tapes or nudes. Kim isn’t saying you have to do those things to be confident, she’s saying that you should do those things if they make you feel good, and you shouldn’t be ashamed of that.
The second part is business. Kim’s mobile app makes bank. She has a bajillion beauty and clothing lines. She knows how to succeed at business. And if you watch KUWTK, you can see this entrepreneurial spirit early on. Kim re-sold purses on eBay for profit at a teenager! Um, I was pretty much just eating cookies in front of the TV at that age. I couldn’t have even conceived of a business idea, let alone believed in myself enough to follow through with it. But had I been a Kim fan back then, maybe I would have dreamed and achieved more as a teen.
Anyway, if a young Kim K can do it, so can you, ladies. (See our post on Kardashian career tips for specific how-tos.) We’ve all got brains. Achieve that dream! Nurture that entrepreneurship. Seriously, we desperately need more women in business and leadership positions. Let’s celebrate Kim’s business success instead of tearing her down for not achieving it in the typical, (boring) cookie-cutter way.
Again, I’m not saying Kim is a role model because she posts nudes on the internet or takes a lot of selfies or rocks a ton of makeup and contouring. (That’s another whole article, by the way – why do some women judge others for having fun with beauty?) Kim is a role model because she continues to pursue her dream of being a businesswoman and is unapologetically herself… despite millions of people slut-shaming her and calling her empty-headed and every other insult in the book. She has more negativity and vitriol thrown at her every day than any of us will ever experience, and she manages to succeed – and wildly so – in spite of it.
In the end, Kim Kardashian teaches women that you can do what you love, do what makes you feel empowered, embrace your sexuality/body, and shake it off. ‘Cause haters are gonna hate. Who cares if people think you don’t have anything to offer to them? Prove them wrong. Develop that app. Create that Etsy business. Buy that dress that makes you feel like a million bucks. Contour every day if it makes you feel like an empress in the hallways of your school or office. The ability to have that confidence in yourself is something I hope we all obtain. And that’s why I love the Kardashians, especially Kim.
So what do you think?
Are you a huge Kardashian fan like me? Are there things you love that you’ve felt you couldn’t talk about publicly? Tell us in the comments, let’s be honest with each other!
I am all about owning what you enjoy, and so kudos to you for liking what you like (I recall Dave Grohl saying something about guilty pleasures don’t exist, only pleasures should)
Having said that, I personally really don’t see how Kim Kardashian could be seen as a role model. She hasn’t really contributed anything unique or noteworthy to the world in my opinion. There are plenty of strong women who are confident but have no need to show it off as Kim Kardashian does – that’s just narcissism to me. They just are without having to shove it in anyone’s face. As for her being a business woman, she comes from an affluent background with lots of connections – a background most women won’t find themselves in. Great that Kim says that women should be what they want to be, but anyone could tell you that. She’s hardly inspirational to me.
I personally have nothing pro or against kim or her family but i do indeed have against this good role model/bad role model I think it’s a somewhat ridiculous position we tend to input on celebrity they DON’T need to be role models, in Kim case she herself is a product that needs to mantain an image, whatever it is that sells to people but that’s that, her intentiontions are comercial as much as other famous people and they don’t need to be good or bad role models, i think that’s something that bothers me quite a lot that we tend to put famous people on pedestals that shouldn’t even exist.
I agree 100℅ with you comment and Neeya’ s, both your opinions complement each other in this complicated point of view we all created about celebrities
“Perfectly normal people morph into ravenous hyenas at the mere mention of a family that has literally done them no wrong” preach!!!
I agree, although I like the Jenner girls the most.
It never makes sense to me why people 1. enjoy complaining about total strangers and 2. Think that something a stranger does is any of their business. 3. Expect a big pat on the head and a cookie for spewing their vitriol.
This article just feels like a defense of trending pop news lukewarmly disguised as a personal piece. I would have preferred to hear more about you coming to terms with liking the kardashians, tapioca pudding, etc. and how you’ve put yourself out there and the response you’ve faced, especially with the TBD Adventures tagline. Like, hey, I’ve publicly told my friends in person that I like Kim Kardashian and I think she’s a role model and some people agreed with me and some didn’t and I’ve grown in XYZ way and it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. This just reads as an op-ed in favor of Kim Kardashian, which is fine, but this seems like the wrong platform for doing so. People read the TBD Adventures because they want to hear about what you’ve done (the vagina monologues was such a good article) in the past and what you’ve learned from it. It’s strange that this article in itself is your adventure (I’m going to tell the CF community that I like Kim Kardashian) because you can’t chronicle your adventures if you’re doing it in the present tense instead of talking about it in the past tense.
Its the nature of the business that I could never get behind. I suppose what I don’t like is that a person can make huge business profits off of superficial things. Professional sport players and celebrities earning more money than doctors, soldiers. The Kardashians are very smart people who are taking advantage of the fact that we are more oriented towards entertainment than world events (yes I do recall them bringing attention to Armenian history some time ago)