Kim Kardashian is famous for being famous. While her original claim to fame was a sex tape, it has been 13 years since it was made and now she's richer and more famous than ever. Due to her fashion taste, modeling work, reality TV show, and marriage to rapper Kanye West, Kim Kardashian is now a household name in 2016. Recently, she has been the butt end (no pun intended) of much criticism over the nude selfies that she has posted to Instagram. This criticism only highlights the rape culture that we live in.
First, let's look back to the scandal that took place in 2015. Someone thought that it would be cool to hack several celebrities' phones, steal their photos, and post their nude photos to the internet. When researching this topic, I didn't find news, I found lists of the top 100 leaked nude photos, the hottest celebrities with leaked nudes, and so on and so forth. People actively search for these stolen nude photos that are on the internet as the result of nothing short of a sex crime.
In an interview with Sam Kashner, Jennifer Lawrence poignantly described her feelings about being taken advantage of.
"It's my body, and it should be my choice, and the fact that it is not my choice is absolutely disgusting."
She's right. The fact that she had her private photos stolen and that people gawk at them is disgusting. It exposes a culture that takes pleasure in taking advantage of women. We love to look at nude photos without the permission of the women, but when it comes to Kim Kardashian posting nude photos of herself, we're mad.
People are mad because she posted those photos of herself. They're mad because she's posting them because she likes to look at herself and is confident, as opposed to taking nude photos for someone else to enjoy and waiting for someone to tell her that she is sexy.
Kim knows that she's sexy and she wants to celebrate it. It's a problem for many people because she's owning her own body and setting a standard that tells women to do the same. She's telling women not to wait for someone else to think that you're sexy, think it about yourself. For a culture that's dominated by men, that's intimidating. It's intimidating because if women don't need your validation, that means that they don't need you. We're taking away your power.
That's the difference in Kim and Jennifer. Kim consented, so it wasn't sexy. Jennifer didn't consent, so it was. That is rape culture.
