As a litmus test of celebrity worthiness, there is nothing more definitive than the Met Gala guest list. Personally overseen each year by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, the invitations are issued on her subjective perception of who’s “hot” and who’s “not”.
So, when speculation mounts, as it has been, that for the first time in 10 years not a single character from the Kardashian Cinematic Universe is making the cut for the May event this year, it speaks to a sentiment about the Kardashian-Jenners that has been growing steadily louder: people are sick of them.
Kim Kardashian attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in May, 2022 in New York City.Credit:Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
The Kardashian name has become shorthand for a certain kind of celebrity, a certain kind of cultural influence and flagrant headline-grabbing since 2007, when Kim Kardashian’s sex tape was released online just seven months before her family’s reality show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, began airing on the E! network.
Since then, she and her sisters (and their mother) have risen to prominence across not just television but the worlds of fashion, fitness and – most recently – finance. Last year, every member of their family attended the Met Gala for the first time – a stamp of approval from Wintour and a far cry from the status they had a decade ago, when Kim made her gala debut as the plus-one of her now-ex-husband, rapper and antisemite Kanye West.
Many who once watched their show, social media, and public performance with affection, have grown tired of what, these days, feels more like a machine spinning wildly, throwing anything at the wall (vitamins! swimwear! cleaning products!) and praying something sticks.
They’ve been seeing just how much they can get away with shilling, and just how much money they can continue to make.
From left, Khloe, Kourtney and Kim Kardashian, Kris and Kylie Jenner arrive at Cosmopolitan magazine’s 50th birthday celebration in California in 2015.Credit:Invision
In December 2022, Newsweek reported it polled 1,500 American adults, 33 per cent of whom “think the Kardashians’ influence on pop culture has fallen in the past year”.
Like many things that happened in 2021, it was both about COVID and about much more than COVID. After all, who can forget Kim’s 40th birthday party in 2020, held on a private island where, as she described in a tweet, her “closest inner circle … could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time”.
For the rest of America, that period was scarred by over 200,000 COVID-related deaths and unemployment for almost 11 million people. When her sister Kendall Jenner turned 25 the following month, she celebrated in a packed Hollywood bar. As the model blew out the candles on her cake, a masked server holding it steady tried his best to lean away from her airborne droplets.
But there was another scene, less conspicuous but no less nefarious, that provoked outrage as well. It was a brief moment in an episode in the final season of the E! reality series, which wrapped in June 2021 after 20 seasons. In this episode, Khloe was infected with coronavirus and isolating away from her daughter, True, at their home … with a fresh set of stiletto-shaped acrylic nails. For the uninitiated, it’s the kind of manicure that requires at least an hour of up-close interaction with a trained nail tech to achieve.
Khloe and Kim Kardashian at the CFDA Fashion Awards, 2022, in New York. Credit:Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
We’ve always known the Kardashians chose what to show and what to hide from viewers and followers and fans. But in 2020 it felt more significant than just being caught reshooting a “real” scene for the show. They made it clear the rules that applied to the rest of us didn’t apply to them. The same is true for most celebrities and one-percenters – but they are less eager to share their lives in a bizarre simulacrum of “reality”.
The power of the Kardashians, for brands hoping for their endorsement and media entities vying for access, was their ability to predict and set trends.
Before making her fortune selling matte liquid lipsticks and exfoliants filled with microbeads, Kylie Jenner was an early user of social platforms like Tumblr and Snapchat. When Kim joined Instagram, she became so obsessed with the ability to share even more of her visage it made her abandon her beloved Blackberry in favour of an iPhone.
Kim Kardashian rebranded her previous KKW beauty line to SKKN.Credit:SKKN/Instagram
But the growth of TikTok in recent years has left the family in the dust. Less filtered and planned than the platforms they pioneered, TikTok users can be brutal in the comments and have an innate ability to sniff out phony attempts at familiarity. The fact Kim’s presence on the app is via an account she shares with her pre-teen daughter North is a sign the tables have turned. Perhaps now the Kardashians are no longer keeping up with us.
When their new Hulu series, The Kardashians, premiered in April 2022, less than a year had passed since the family’s exhaustive farewell tour to the one that preceded it. They promised faster turnaround on episodes (so the storylines fans observed in tabloids and on social media would be on screen soon after). An early teaser proclaimed “all the walls will be shattered”.
In season one, we watched as Kris Jenner celebrated her birthday with a glamorous dinner at home. In Houston, Texas that same November night, Kylie and Kendall were at the Astroworld concert.
While Travis Scott – with whom Kylie shares two children – performed, 10 people died in a crowd crush. Kylie posted (and later deleted) a video of the crowd showing ambulances attempting to drive into the crowd. On The Kardashians, Astroworld was not only never mentioned, it was inferred that Kendall missed her mother’s birthday dinner because she was on vacation with celebrity friend Hailey Bieber despite paparazzi photos showing that trip took place a week later.
Travis Scott and Kylie Jenner arrive at the 2019 Grammy Awards.Credit:Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP
Season two of the show gave much of the same: none of the promised insider glimpses of Kourtney Kardashian’s wedding(s) to Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker. No mention of Caitlyn Jenner’s many controversies, including her support of the controversial and queerphobic “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
Pete Davidson, Kim’s boyfriend at the time of filming, appeared in trailers for the season but was swiftly edited out after their break-up. As her ex-husband Kanye’s hateful public statements got more frequent and dangerous, she stayed silent. As did Kendall, as the public backlash to her “migrant chic” campaign for her tequila brand, 818, grew louder.
Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker at their wedding.Credit:Ellen Von Unwerth
They sold us a show as a glimpse behind the curtain, but all that’s back there are more curtains, and more stuff to sell. It’s a funhouse mirror with no way out.
Perhaps it’s because these latest omissions and incidents are particularly egregious, or maybe because the Kardashians have said and done so many insensitive, thoughtless, and out-of-touch things in the past that we’re just exhausted. Whatever has caused the recent apathy towards the family, their path back to legitimacy seems like a steep one. Especially because this time, social media is not on their side.
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