display
It is always difficult to say what is hidden behind a beautiful facade, but one often suspects something gruesome.
Sad truths, dark secrets, human abysses.
In fact, reality can also look completely unexciting and normal.
So that one wonders why someone has tried so hard to maintain this facade.
This is the question you would like to ask Khloé Kardashian, a member of the Kardashian clan and the main character in the latest media drama that is currently buzzing around the most famous reality TV family in the world.
A photo of Khloé Kardashian has been spreading on social media since Monday, which was probably given out by an assistant without permission.
With the millions of Kardashian images now filling the visual society catalog of our time, that alone shouldn't be worth more than a message.
But this photo is different: It shows Khloé Kardashian in a bikini, without retouching.
The sun shines on your body, shines a light on a few bumps, bulges and depths, in short, on human skin.
The star smiles at the camera, her face is barely made up and her hair is tied in a sporty ponytail.
A very relaxed vacation picture.
But one whose existence and visibility in the public the multi-billion dollar self-marketing agency called Kardashian cannot stand.
Shortly after the picture made the rounds on platforms like Twitter and Reddit, the family's PR soldiers switched to attack mode.
Anyone who shared the photo was threatened with legal consequences.
Posts with the photo were deleted from Twitter, users report that some accounts have been deactivated.
The marketing boss of Kim Kardashian's beauty line KKW, Tracy Romulus told the online portal “Page Six” that it was Kardashian's right not to want to see a private picture in public for reasons of copyright.
display
Now one would also accept personal reasons: If Khloé Kardashian does not like a photo of himself and does not want to see it published, for whatever reasons, that's understandable.
Still, the family's reaction to the picture appears, in an almost comical way, panic and disproportionately aggressive, especially given the fact that the picture generated mostly positive responses.
Because the person on it has not been polished to a characterless avatar, but looks like a person, moreover one with a healthy, beautiful and well-trained body.
The Kardashians have exposed their entire lives on their television series, the last season of which has aired for a few weeks, and on social media.
But what they exemplify is a curated reality that they can ultimately shape and stage in the way they like best.
The body plays a central role in this and is modeled and processed so that the waistline is extremely narrow, the hips extremely luscious and the lips look puffy.
Khloé Kardashian in particular has been criticized several times for posting photos of herself in which the face and body were retouched beyond recognition, so that one often got the feeling that one was dealing with different women.
It is all the more refreshing to see the “real” Khloé.
But once the filter is removed, it not only reveals a few streaks and dents, but also the distorted self-image of a woman who has apparently learned that only her social media avatar is worth seeing.
That's sad, especially when you consider that Khloé Kardashian actually wants to celebrate “Body Acceptance” with her own fashion label Good American.
Every woman and girl who identifies with the curvy models in the Good American online shop must feel very mocked.
display
Kardashian himself seems to have had enough of the talk about her body - which is very understandable.
"Society thinks they can talk about my weight, face and personal life all the time, and I'm just getting tired of it," she said on a recent episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
In an Instagram post, she also took a specific position on the bikini photo: The pressure, the ridicule and the judgments that she experienced in connection with her body had simply become unbearable.
With the crazy deletion campaign against a completely unspectacular photo, her family does not help her with it.
She misses the chance to send out a positive message about self-acceptance, or at least normalize the celebrity sister's body.
That would have been worth more than any filter.
Our podcast THE REAL WORD is about the important big and small questions in life: What do breast selfies have to do with feminism? How does the long-term relationship stay happy? And what can you learn from the TV “Bachelorette”? Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, Deezer, iTunes or Google Podcasts or subscribe to us directly via RSS feed.