Kim Kardashian has revealed why she didn’t speak out against the Balenciaga teddy bear controversy at the very beginning.
Earlier this year, Balenciaga launched an ad campaign featuring child models holding teddy bears dressed in bondage gear and an image of a Supreme Court opinion on a child pornography case. The adverts were removed from all platforms following a severe backlash, and the label issued an apology.
One month after the controversy, Kardashian released a statement saying that she was “re-evaluating her relationship” with the brand.
At the time, many people called out the Skims founder for not speaking out about the issue sooner.
On Monday’s episode of the Angie Martinez IRL podcast, The Kardashians star revealed why she didn’t speak out immediately after the controversy emerged.
“With the Balenciaga thing, everyone was like, ‘Why aren’t you speaking out? Why aren’t you speaking out?’ And I’m like, ‘Wait. I’m not in this campaign. I don’t know what’s happening. Let me take a minute to research this,’” she said.
“And then as soon as I saw what everyone was seeing on the internet and the reality of the situation, I completely spoke out and gave my thoughts on child porn and completely denounced it.
“But because I didn’t say, ‘F*** you, Balenciaga. That’s it,’ people got mad at that,” she continued. “So they’re mad if I don’t speak out. They’re mad if I do speak out, and if I don’t cancel.”
In the same podcast, Kardashian also spoke out about how co-parenting with her ex-husband Kanye West is “hard”.
“One day my kids will thank me for sitting here and not bashing their dad when I could,” she told host Angie Martinez. “All the crazy s***.
“They’ll thank me and I’ll privately answer anything that they want to know. It’s not my place anymore to jump in.”
