The new bra in Kim Kardashian’s lingerie range, with its “daring” raised nipple detail, goes on sale on Halloween, but not, I think, because the effect she’s going for is “scary”. The sales pitch is “No matter how hot it is, you will always look cold”, but I’m not sure “cold” is the look she’s really after, either; the word “perky” has also been floated. Kim is offering you the chance to look permanently turned on, by everything. You could be ambling along with nothing on your mind but a knotty Wordle and half a to-do list, and thanks to the Skims perky bra, sprinkle random erotic charge all over everything. Would this make your day better, or worse? Hard to say, but definitely different.
I resisted Kardashian discourse all the way through the butt years, as I felt that people were loading her with beliefs and agendas she hadn’t necessarily signed up to. All she did was appear on the cover of Romanian Playboy in 2010, with the headline Poezia Unui Fund Bombat (the poetry of a bulging ass). I doubt she wrote the words herself, or made any great claims for the poetry of any of her body parts. She was lauded for tearing down the expectations of what a bottom was supposed to look like, then later, in the inevitable backlash, Time magazine said, “Kim Kardashian’s ass is nothing but an empty promise” – which I guess made sense, if you thought its promise was to smash the patriarchy. It did make me wonder what an ass delivering on a promise would have looked like. And whether, in fact, if you think too hard about the sociocultural implications of any celebrity’s butt, you will end up disappointed, and maybe that’s something for you to deal with on your own.
Between the butt, the shapewear empire and the new nipple-y bra, I’ve figured out Kim Kardashian’s real purpose: to create clothes that make you look more naked than you would naked. It’s situationism rebooted: beneath the pavement, the beach; on top of the nipple, the perkier nipple.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
