The skeptics of Kim Kardashian’s mugging are beginning to sound like those who excuse rape.
Yes, if you haven’t heard, Kim K was gagged and bound early Monday morning and supposedly held at gun- point. It was so serious as to prematurely end Kanye West’s tour.
I have never been one to immediately soak in the realities portrayed through social media and I rarely wrap myself up in the lives of our celebrities, but there is something inherently wrong with the lack of attention this report is receiving. It is as if her status as a celebrity is creating a bubble, or maybe this bubble was conceived by the anti-feminists and shallow minded public, to contain the situation. Shrouded in the cloth of ignorance, many people develop opinions which undermine the progress of the original Women’s Suffrage movement and what it was meant to accomplish.
The inability to perceive issues is problematic, however, the refusal to acknowledge these issues is even more detrimental to social justice. One can open his/her eyes, but it is much more difficult to open one’s mind.
The arguments of those in response to the robbery sound eerily familiar to the “if her skirt hadn’t been so short/tight” rhetoric of societal finger-pointers. The thing is, it does not matter whether Kim Kardashian fabricated the entire story for television material, even if it was for the sake of attention. What we are experiencing is the nuanced perpetuation of female stereotypes and the unmerciful pressures placed on celebrity status. Walking down the street in a jacket made of twenty dollar bills does not make it any more appropriate to harass or steal from me. They are blaming her experience on the money she has in her bank and because she is a woman, “there must’ve been something she did to provoke five masked men to pounce on her.”
It’s these channels of thought which are detrimental to the progress and change social movements wish to see. Similarly, turning a blind eye, or ear, to the challenges of celebrity life can cause issues to become magnified. In the case of Whitney Houston and her daughter Bobbi Brown, we didn’t see their struggle until their faces slipped slowly beneath the surface of their warm baths. The bubbles concealed their sinking figures below, a façade of serenity and in the moment they were pulled out – it was a voiceless cry demanding change in our perception of people. There is a limit to how long people can push on before they become engulfed by the waves of misconception and ignorance.
"She deserved it."
"She was begging for it."
"She never said 'no'."
In the context of Kim Kardashian, it is no different than the women and men who are taken advantage of. She isn’t better than any of us. The glamor doesn’t follow her into the bathroom where she washes the makeup off of her face and yes Kim poops too, just like us.
Humanizing celebrities is a step towards understanding the equality in all who walk this green earth. At the end of the day, all the chess pieces – the queens, kings, knights, and pawns all go back into the same box.
