No, it didn’t break the Internet. And sorry, you can't unsee that impossibly large, oiled-up, whiskey-colored double spheroid that can stand in for so many things. As exhibited, holding up that
teeny tiny waist, the rear is so gleamingly plump and giddily wide you’d think it would need its own tracking shot.
I refer, of course, to the unexpected, slightly surreal images of Kim Kardashian West, cover star of Paper magazine’s Winter 2014 “Break the
Internet” issue.
When I first saw that exaggerated backside, it appeared to be so post-human that I thought Kim looked like a female centaur. (Apparently, so did hundreds of other
people, who instantly created that exact meme.) The image also suggested an anime character, My Little Pony, and the sad, 19th -century case of the Hottentot Venus. But more on that
later.
The ass shot did get under everyone’s skin, launching thousands of Internet memes and parody covers, not to mention a veritable magazine of its own ass-based (and bad-ass) cracks
and puns. That’s because there’s something unbelievably canny (sorry) about mixing so many incendiary issues — race, slavery, female sexuality, porn — and projecting them onto
the public body of a woman who has 25 million Twitter followers, no shame, and an unyielding appetite for attention.
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The pictures are smarter than mere naked flesh. Rather, they’re
about art, sex, money, and power. And in this case, all the moons are in alignment.
Kim supposedly said that the portraits were the result of “oil and good lighting.”
And if you believe that, you’ll also agree that Renee Zellweger’s new face is the upshot of eating healthfully and feeling happier in her life.
No, the construction czar behind
this Kim/Paper project is the French designer Jean-Paul Goude. A sometime art director of Esquire, he was a master at manipulating imagery way before computers and Photoshop. And if he
could make the opera singer Jessye Norman disappear into a wall of water, he can manage a quick film shoot with very game Mrs. Yeezus during Fashion Week in Paris.
TMZ says KKW did it for
free. That makes sense: Most print publications are financially struggling-to-anemic these days. And Paper is a downtown art world/pop cultural zine with a paid circulation of 125,000 on a very
good day.
Certainly, the pub’s editor and publisher, Kim Hastreiter, and editorial director Mickey Boardman were friendly with Goude from back in the day. And the need for speed and the
lack of bucks is probably why Goude, a human idea factory, and the author of the autobiography “Jungle Fever,” merely recreated some of the controversial (and some say racist) shots he
initiated in the 1970s and 1980s.
They’re all brilliant compositions. The photo of Kim balancing an erupting champagne glass on her ass, “Champagne Incident,” was based on an earlier one featuring a naked black model. Goude also
became famous for his work with the black, towering, androgynous singer Grace Jones, who was all angles and hardbody. Meanwhile, Kim — the latter day, post-surgical embodiment of
founder Hugh Hefner’s pneumatic dream, the 1950s Playboy centerfold — is white, short, and all orbs.
Kim is known for being famous. Does that say something about
our present culture? For one thing, this is a very practical, cash-strapped, 21st century endeavor, a case of everybody using everybody. By working with Kardashian West, Goude gets to
jumpstart his career again, and Paper becomes the magazine equivalent of a comet for a few days.
What’s in it for Kim, who is already Instagram’s third most popular figure
and Queen of the Damned Selfies? (This is pretty sickening, but her mobile phone app amassed $43 million in income in the last three months.) Well, aside from promoting her “brand,”
which she does 24/7 anyway, my theory is that the shoot feeds Kanye’s fanatical infatuation with all things French. He seems to see any Gallic association as adding prestige and an elevated
taste level, superior to anything American. He famously went on a rant about not being accepted by certain designers, and he’s obsessed with collecting Hermes bags. Since they’ve been
together, Kim and Kanye have been going to the Fashion Week shows in Paris, dragging poor little North along (even at night!) Typically, the one-year-old sports an obviously uncomfortable,
inappropriate, handmade outfit matching whatever unflattering haute couture get-up Kim is girdled into. And no one in the family looks happy.
Kim has already been slut-shamed and Mom-shamed
(and now she should be oil-shamed.) To the horror of feminists, humanists, and a huge swatch of the over-educated, under-earning population of thinking people, no one exploits and objectifies
herself more. So the prospect of being charged with reopening the mortal wound of slavery probably does not faze her.
The ass shot does indeed suggest the story of Saartjie Baartman, a
teenager with a hugely oversized derriere who in the early 1800s was kidnapped from Africa and sold to a traveling circus in England, where she was exhibited as a freak show attraction dubbed
“The Hottentot Venus.” She was later taken to France by an animal trainer who used and abused her. Her tragic life was the subject of the play “Venus” by the
MacArthur-genius-grant- and Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks.
Goude’s work has also been criticized as racist,
for exploiting the black female body as a primitive caricature devoted to sexual service. By contrast, this shoot seemed to bring some rarely seen fun and lightness to Kim’s often bitchy-looking
resting face. Throughout, she sports a cute topknot in her hair, pearl choker, and black satin gloves, more Audrey Hepburn than African goddess. The other bombshell photos unveiled a day later,
Kim’s full-frontal nudes, show her open-mouthed and joyous. She’s standing on a box, like Mae West. And she certainly has a
glorious body. (To paraphrase Seinfeld, they may not be totally real, but they are spectacular.) And from the front, she looks way better without clothing. It’s as if, like Jessica Rabbit,
she’s saying, “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn (or surgically enhanced and Photoshopped) that way.”
Also, TMZ says this is her last photographic hurrah before getting
pregnant again. (Another infuriating quality of someone who needs to “share everything” with the Interwebs.)
Without a doubt, something about her is a human money magnet. And
that’s why we hate her, but can’t look away.