Who Hates Kim Kardashian?
Anna wintour excluded her from her gala at the MET to later give her a cover of her. Leonardo DiCaprio refused to share a party with his family. America is torn between loving her or hating her as she perfects her formula for making money
American society has been divided for a few years. On the one hand, she is rendered at the feet of her indisputably most popular partner of hers: reality TV queen Kim Kardashian. And on the other, she is obsessed with humiliating and despising her most populist partner: reality queen Kim Kardashian. Seldom has this dichotomy been felt as much as in recent days. The closest incident in time is perhaps the most representative: it was on June 1, when Leonardo DiCaprio attended the birthday of Frank Delgado, a famous party promoter in California. As members of the Kardashian family were in the room filming a chapter of their reality show, Keeping up with the Kardashians, the actor preferred not to enter while they were there. The headline spread like wildfire for several days: Leonardo DiCaprio despises the Kardashians.
Actually the thing was not so bad. A call to the XIV club confirms that DiCaprio did attend the party. All he did was wait for the Kardashians to finish filming. However, the incident fits perfectly with the love-hate relationship that America feels towards his most unlikely girlfriend. Kim is, after all, a woman who became known because the video of a sexual encounter between her and a rapper hit the Internet in 2007. From there she has built a media empire based on her reality show, her cosmetic lines for supermarkets and clothing (in 2013, Forbes estimated its annual profits at around 7.5 million euros). If this may sound, here, tacky and lacking in merit, it is because it needs to be added the instinctive love of the American public for whom she wins while having the chance to lose. And the love that arouses who defies, at least on the surface, Puritan conventions. And of course cyber culture, which in 2007 was looking for accessible and ubiquitous celebrities to click on.
Because of her guilty pleasure condition, Kim has always received public rejection from the same population who, according to polls, then held her for her most beloved celebrity. In 2012, Jon Hamm, who plays Don Draper on Mad Men, said: “It doesn't matter whether you're Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian - stupidity is celebrated these days. Being an idiot is valued because idiots are rewarded significantly. "That same year, Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, declined to invite her to the MET gala because she did not meet the criteria of" the biggest stars in the world. The story seemed written, it was Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman trying to buy at the luxury store to the rejection of the shop assistants.
But the script took a turn: Kim began dating one of the most successful rappers in the country. Kanye West was not an especially loved person (he is the author of pearls like: "The bad thing about being the voice of God is that I will never see myself perform live"), but he was admired. And he was close friends with Jay Z and Beyoncé, the most unbeatable artist couple in pop.
After triumphing for being the celebrity that she exposed the most of herself, she began to enclose her intimacy. To refuse to make statements or create controversy. To behave like a celebrity in her own right. And the world around her seemed to give way. In February 2013, when she appeared in a photoshoot for Elle magazine, stylist Nicola Formichetti criticized several of the luxury designers who had refused to lend their clothes for Kim's photographs. "It's typical fashion snobbery," he added, in defense of the incipient icon of that American dream that says status is achieved by wanting it.
As if to prove it, the couple got married last May. Unlike previous weddings that were televised and almost wiped out her image, Kim performed this in total privacy, at the Forte Belvedere in Florence. She was no longer a transgression. She was the norm. The American edition of Vogue, the same fashion bible that had denied her entry to her elite party at the MET, dedicated a cover to them. "One of the great pleasures of publishing this magazine is to show those who define culture at any time, those who shake things up, those whose mere presence in this world shapes it," Wintour recounted in her editorial.
But the dreaded editor did not attend the wedding, although she had been invited. And, back home, things didn't seem any better. The New York Post reported the celebration in a less hagiographic way than many other media: "Two assholes got married in Italy." And then came the DiCaprio thing. Another proof that the relationship between America and Kim Kardashian can be many things, but above all it is suicidal: it only seeks to self-destruct. "He was first a public person and then he wanted to be just an image," reasons Robert K. Passkoff, president of Brand Keys, which analyzes the relationship between brands and the public. "What the public expects of her is precisely that she endure rejection."
