Girls for A Change Founder and CEO Whitney Smith reflects on the media coverage of the Kim Kardashian divorce…
As the hub-bub around the Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries marriage/divorce winds down, I find myself feeling ill at ease with the majority of perspectives out there. There has been a great deal of anger and disgust expressed at the cost of the wedding, the length of the marriage and the phrase “media whore” has been thrown around quite a bit.
(I have to give three disclaimers to my readers: 1. My organization (Girls for a Change) has been connected, although loosely so, to Khloe Kardashian in association with a cause marketing campaign. 2. I am not a big fan of the concept of marriage in general nor do I think that divorce is a terrible thing when a marriage no longer serves those who are in it. 3. I have seen about 2 episodes of The Kardashian’s TV series in total.)
The thing that has been weighing heavy on my mind as I have seen the media and Facebook status updates that are filled with venom directed mostly at Kim Kardashian. In choosing to be a reality TV star I guess you sign-up for full court scrutiny from all of your 3.11 million viewers and everyone else. I guess what sits with me is that when I look at her, I just see a human being. A human being who is young, who has made choices to earn her living primarily through the commoditization of simply being and a human being who, like many of us, has made capricious choices in love. I wonder what it is about our culture that both loves and hates this. I also wonder why we see Kim Kardashian, the commodity, as the evil entity? E!, the leadership at NBC Universal, and those who tune in to the show are the reason it exists. No one has called NBC Universal a “Media Pimp.”
I am not asking you to feel sorry for Kim Kardashian. It isn’t that she should somehow be seen as a victim. I am not sure what the moral of this story is, but I do know that I feel the issue is not what Kim Kardashian’s choices are but how we respond to them. Both choosing to tune in and choosing to care to scrutinize them.
by Whitney Smith, Founder and CEO of Girls for a Change
