The Kardashian family is definitely not new to the spotlight. They have had and continue to have every aspect of their lives, actions and statements picked apart by the media and viewers alike. Unsurprisingly, not only has her divorce with Kanye West (one which deserves a whole article on its own) been a hot topic, but her recent statement during an interview with Variety has been gaining attraction – for all the wrong reasons. In an article targeted towards women in business, Kim advises women to “get your f*cking ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.” Giving her the benefit of the doubt, Kim may have said this in an attempt to encourage women out there. Unfortunately, it is extremely tone-deaf as it does not consider how one’s social and financial privileges can contribute to a successful career in business.
I’m not trying to downplay Kim’s success or the work that she has put in thus far in her career. While the Kardashian-Jenner clan have put in the work to build a name for their family, it is extremely important to acknowledge the amount of privilege they enjoyed growing up and how it has contributed to their success. There are two sources of privilege: the first being privilege that one enjoys from being part of the racial majority and the second being privilege one enjoys from having access to wealth and resources. This article will focus on the latter.
Kim was born into a middle-upper-class family where her father, Robert Kardashian, was an attorney and businessman. Additionally, her step-father, now known as Caitlyn Jenner, was an Olympic gold-medal winning decathlete. With rich parents, she spent her childhood in Beverly Hills living in a house which some such as actress Jameela Jamil would classify as simply a smaller mansion. Kim attended Marymount High School which is an independent all-girls Catholic School with a hefty price tag of more than $39,000 as of 2022. Given that she and her siblings attended the same school, it is safe to say that her parents had huge spending power, more so than the average household. Furthermore, Kim is known to have been friends with Paris Hilton since they were children, suggesting that they ran in the same affluent social circles. According to research done by the National Burea of Economic Research in 2018, children from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to succeed in life, at least in the conventional sense. Firstly, these children have access to better quality education which in turn will help them to earn more when they enter the labour force. Secondly, given their parents affluent connections and ties, they have more opportunities opened to them. Kim’s friendship with Paris Hilton has allowed her to star in Hilton’s reality The Simple Life as Paris’s stylist. While Kim’s rise to fame came later, her ties with Hilton undeniably allowed her to garner some attention in the entertainment scene. All of these factors seem to suggest that her middle upper class upbringing has partly afforded her achievements. As the phrase goes, business is about who you know!
entertainment, it is fair to say that Kim has never had the worries that most female entrepreneurs do. Most working mothers and parents do not have the luxury of being able to afford nannies to take care of their young children while working from home during a pandemic. Whereas, Kim has nannies that help her to take care of her children which allows her to fully concentrate on running her business such as KKW beauty. Most parents working from home have to toggle between their work and their young children who more often than not demand their attention, making them less able to fully concentrate on their work and giving their businesses the proper attention needed for them to succeed.
Most importantly, Kim’s statement reflects society’s problematic view that the main determinant of success is one’s hard work and determination, rather than the privileges one enjoys from the circumstances of their birth. There are many people who work hard, some even juggling more than two jobs just to make ends meet. Is their plight truly from the unwillingness to “get off their bums”? To frame the issue in such a manner only distracts from the real issue — how the state has failed to provide those who live in relative poverty with adequate resources to rise and break out of the poverty cycle. Just in the US alone, 11.4% of the population are living in poverty. While the number may seem small, however, given that there are around 332 million Americans, about 37 million Americans live in poverty. Many states with large populations living in extremely less than desirable conditions have had their funding cut by the state. It is reported that schools and districts with high rates of poverty not only have less state funding, but within recent years have had their state funding cut. As mentioned earlier, high quality of education is important to help students to find well-paying jobs that will help them break free from the poverty cycle. Therefore the lack of governmental aid for such impoverished communities will only perpetuate the cycle of poverty and not allow these communities to succeed in life.
Kim Kardashian is definitely not the first nor will she be the last to sprout such rhetoric. In fact her statement is essentially a paraphrase of Molly Mae’s highly controversial statment in her podcast where she notes that everyone has the same 24 hours as Beyonce. However instead of just condemning these people, we should look at how their statement is part of a larger issue within society.