An Explanation of Why People Give a Shit About Kim Kardashian’s Naked Body

When Kim Kardashian posted a nude photo of herself on Twitter earlier this week, her nipples and genitalia covered only by two black boxes, it sparked the most heated debate surrounding a pair of tits since Donald Trump and Sarah Palin appeared on stage together at Iowa State University.

Despite Kim Kardashian having become internationally famous pretty much as a result of her being naked on camera, then having continued to raise her public profile by getting naked on camera numerous times after that, it’s difficult to ascertain why this particular occasion of her being naked has been so difficult for so many people to get over. Such has been the intensity of the reaction to her tweet, in which she captioned her nude selfie (pictured above) with the words “When you’re like I have nothing to wear LOL,” that even Hit-Girl thought she’d gone a little over the top this time:

But while I’d like to think that the majority of those reading this shared the same incredulous reaction as me, as they watched waves upon waves of people growing so outraged by a photo of a pair of partially covered breasts and a blacked-out vagina, I still feel as though we could all benefit from an iron-clad explanation to revert back to the next time a female celebrity does something with her body that other people believe she shouldn’t be doing for some reason.

So, here it is:

People are pissed off because they can’t stand celebrities who aren’t humble.

Any time one of these contrived controversies arises we have to sit through the innumerable hurried op-eds explaining how a Kardashian nude pic is sending out harmful messages to young girls, as though Keeping Up With The Kardashians is the modern-day equivalent of Sesame Street and Kim’s a voluptuous Elmo. Following Kim Kardashian on Twitter is not supposed to be an educational exercise, and anyone who suggests that she should be more adequately presenting herself as a role model has clearly not been privy to literally every other facet of her career thus far. Even her mobile game has fucking microtransactions.

But this is the default excuse spouted by those who grow inordinately angry at women showing off their bodies online, masking the simple truth that as a society we basically dislike anyone who struggles to display humility, especially celebrities. We dislike people who will openly reveal to us how great they think they are, with this disdain magnified monumentally when it’s coming from someone with a Twitter account boasting 41.6 million followers. Kim Kardashian is like that one acquaintance you have on Facebook who possesses an almost otherworldly level of confidence, except there are actually people who care about what she does with her life, and she presumably doesn’t have to pay for her modelling photographs out of her own back pocket.

But what does anyone expect her to do? Any celebrity who doesn’t have an unflappably high level of self-esteem is basically a walking future mental breakdown, and considering Kim’s now an omnipresent force across all of entertainment, if she wasn’t confident enough in her own skin to see no harm in posting a photo of her naked body to Twitter then she’d probably wind up shouting about how Satan’s sucking her soul out of her eyes on a street corner in LA. I’ve got a couple of thousand followers on Twitter, and every time one of my tweets starts gaining some traction I feel as though I’m only one misstep away from throwing myself out of my office window, so I can appreciate how thick your skin must have to be to have that number multiplied by millions. 

So in summary, no, it’s not a valid concern to worry about your kids’ actions being influenced by a reality TV star, and there is also very little justification for becoming so inordinately enraged over a pair of tits. Unless those tits are Trump and Palin.


You can follow the author on Twitter @PaulTamburro.

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