Naked

Frankly I felt the cover needed just one addition

This week Kim Kardashian West attempted to #breaktheinternet with the release of some rather grand photographs of her butt.

Shot by Jean-Paul Goude for Paper magazine, the cover (right) pays homage to her famous derriere. Dig a little deeper (as if you’re not interested) and you will witness Kiki ‘re-imagining’ Goude’s best known image “Caroline Beaumont, New York, 1976“.

The Internet seems to still be in tact, just about, but what of all the minds blown by the photographs themselves? People are amused, shocked, disgusted, outraged, curious, excited and royally pissed off by the images.

Kimmy has been the butt (pun intended) of many jokey tributes (including some frankly creepy/unflattering ones) and criticised all over the shop for being a bad feminist, a bad mother and yet again a talent-less, plastic nobody. So far I believe she has turned the other cheek (!!) and I hope that she continues to do so.

NB: Kim did tweet this following release of the pictures:

Who says she isn’t self-aware?

What has all those knickers in a twist really, though? Is it the nudity, or the apparent Photoshopping? Is it the ‘pointlessness’ of it all? Or is it just that it’s Kim having the audacity to celebrate how bloody hot she is?

I know it’s a broad topic and one that has so many arguments but this post is really about butt appreciation from my point of view, so I shall take it from here, guys.

(And a bit of KK appreciation, if I’m honest. Another Proud Pleasure).

Click on image to enlarge

Kimmy, in general, to me is something special. I know where she began, what she has done (who doesn’t? She’s kindly documented almost every aspect of her life for us). I know that technically she doesn’t have a ‘talent’ (singer/baker/candlestick maker), but what if her talent is having a work ethic that would make a mere mortal weep?

What if her super power is having the ability to continually pick herself up, dust herself off and turn all her mistakes into gold? Those are talents I can get behind.

I like Kim, love Keeping Up with The Kardashians and I like Kim’s body too. She looks sensational almost all the time and she’s banging, dammit.

I’m not into body shaming, all bodies types are fine with me and I appreciate the female form as much as the next person. I love seeing curvy women celebrating their curvaceousness as much as I like seeing svelte women representing my favourite designers on the catwalk.

Personally, I don’t have anything against the use of thin women to promote anything as long as there is a visible alternative. How heavenly it would be to see those alternatives in the mainstream, and not just as an afterthought. But that’s a whole other topic for another time.

I’m voluptuous and trying to be proud of that. I’m unlikely to ever be quite as banging as Mrs West (shocker), but as a short woman with a small waist and a big old booty, she is closer to my body type any day than the Keira Knightleys of this world (love her). So why not be happy to see that in all its glory? I sure as shit am!

In another shot within Kim’s issue of Paper, we get to see her full frontal. No, I don’t really see the big deal. It’s just a pair of (great) boobs and very smooth private parts (a fitting tribute to the work of her waxer). She is young and looks amazing. Her pose is playful and proud, not even particularly sexual.

Cheeky ;p

But she’s a mother, say some? Heaven forbid that she teach North to be proud of her body as she grows up. That would be awful. North will see these images one day and you know what? By then Kim will have had the talk with her that explains some of the decisions that she made, that have made her who she is today.

Trust me, North is going to have a more complex time wrapping her head around the cult of celebrity, reality television, Daddy Kanye and the Kardashian Family en masse. Nakedness and an infamous bum are going to be the least of it.

Yes, this is a simplistic view. Yes, the photographs look heavily Photoshopped, thus giving us mere mortals yet another unrealistic ideal to aim toward. We’ve long known that pretty much every cover, every photograph we see in fashion magazines has had the same work. It’s part and parcel of the fashion industry and will hopefully change one day.

Had Kim stood up there in all her natural, oiled goodness with her butt at an angle to emphasise its ripeness would she still have got it in the neck?

But, of course.

Thoughts? Can you add to this conversation?

None of the photographs within this post belong to me.