Kim Kardashian talks selfies, filters & social media with Paper Mag: vapid?

I’ve gone back and forth whether we should even show the extended editorial from Kim Kardashian’s Paper Magazine cover. And I’m still thinking that… no, we shouldn’t. I don’t want to participate in it. You can see Kim’s fully greased-up naked body in these NSFW shots. I’ll admit it, I looked. Some of the photos don’t look Photoshopped to a ridiculous level, but that “booty” shot is the worst offender. They manipulated the crap out of that photo. Oh, and in case you’re wondering… Kim didn’t get paid for this shoot. She took off her kit for free. Anyway, Paper also released their interview with Kim. Here are some highlights from the piece which was, in a word, fawning.
Kim doesn’t use filters on her selfies: “I’m not really a filter person,” and that she doesn’t generally use them when she publishes her many selfies. As she talks, I notice that her skin, which is the golden color of whiskey, is free of wrinkles, crow’s feet, laugh lines, blemishes, freckles, moles, under-eye circles, scars, errant eyebrow hairs or human flaws of any kind.
Keeping Up With the Kardashians: She has called it “the best family movie ever,” never mind the rampant speculation, in early 2013, that season 9 would be her last. I’m surprised to hear that they still enjoy the process, since your typical American family would no longer be on speaking terms. “We’re kind of obsessed with each other,” she explains.
The paparazzi: “Literally every single day there’s about ten cars of paparazzi literally waiting outside our homes…You just have to not care. You just have to say, ‘This is our life, and it is what it is.’ All my friends tell me the world could be coming to an end, and I’m always so calm.”
Her 72-day marriage to Kris Humphries: “It’s just one of those life lessons that you have to learn, and it’s OK.”
Why she documents everything? “There’s nothing we can do that’s not documented, so why not look your best, and amazing?”
Selfies: “My makeup artist said to me the other day, ‘You haven’t taken a selfie in a while,’” Kardashian says, as the afternoon slides into evening and the light turns magic-hour blue. To remedy this, she posted one of herself in full makeup and a white terrycloth robe, with the literal caption, “It’s been a while since I’ve taken a selfie.” It garnered more than a half-a-million likes. Selfies have been on her mind lately. She is putting together a collection of her oeuvre, called Selfish, to be published by Rizzoli in the spring. She has spent hours sifting through her vast, meticulously organized digital archive. “The book company edited them, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute! There are like 300 here that you’re not adding!’” she says. I remark that I am surprised she can remember and differentiate among a bunch of near-identical photos of her face. She can, she says; she is organizing them chronologically, dating them by what she wore to specific events. “I know what I wore, what accessories I wore, where I was, who I was with,” she tells me. “I remember everything.” Her mind, it seems, traps the minutiae most of us forget. For her, though, it’s not minutiae; it’s her life, and her life is her career.
Whether she would exist without social media: “I don’t think so…” she says, slowly, then reconsiders. “I don’t think social media was that heavy when we started our show, but I think we really evolved with social media… I love sharing my world with people,” Kardashian tells me, and I detect no hint of falseness. “That’s just who I am.”
[From Paper]
Well, at least she’s self-aware enough to admit that social media has played and continues to play a huge part in her fame. Most of the Paper article reads like an analysis of just why Kim is famous, why she’s a smart businesswoman, and how she’s like the personification of everything Andy Warhol ever said about fame and celebrity. I kind of agree with all of it – Kim is an extremely vapid and superficial woman, but she doesn’t pretend to be anything else. And she’s also a smart businesswoman.
We get asked a lot about why we cover the Kardashian-Jenners, and what I always say (and it’s true) is that they are “gossip filler.” They’re always good for a headline, you don’t have to think that much about them, and everyone always has an opinion about them. They get pushed to the side when real celebrities are doing more important things and that’s fine. That’s the way it should be. Don’t ask me to really care that much (or at all) that Kim posed naked, because I still don’t get it. As in, I don’t get why it’s a big deal at all. We’ve seen her naked so many times.


Photos courtesy of Paper, Kim’s Instagram.

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