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Editorial: In Defence of Kim Kardashian

Remarks credited to a British school headmistress, Dr Helen Wright while addressing an educational conference some days back that American celebrity, fashion icon and TV reality star, Kim Kardashian is a threat to Western civilization; well I read and I shrugged.

I wouldn’t know if to call such an address a reality-distance speech or one borne out of pure forgetfulness of the characteristics and typical nature of the society she (Helen Wright) emerges from, i.e. the already decayed Western society.

In her words she said “The pupils in our schools really are soaking up a diet of empty celebrity and superficiality. They are under a huge amount of pressure, buffeted by these images and messages.”

“It’s not about a person. That single photograph brought together two aspects of our society – fame for fame’s sake, the distorted view of reality that that brings, and our over-sexualised culture – that encapsulate the vast pressures on young people. I’m not just talking about girls but boys, too, suffer from the focus on appearance that we are in danger of allowing to become mainstream.” she added.

First, let us be clear on something; it is not Kim Kardashian’s fault that 90% of the world’s population made themselves gullible and dumb (yeah right, you’ll hear that from me time to time) and have allowed themselves to be instruments of another man’s glory while theirs drown. But how then do you address the problem when everyone thinks they know it all or are on the right path and yet in their own folly are nothing but constant source of manipulations – both from their own doings and those of their ever ready manipulators.

I see this world as such typical to a game of chess, whereas certain people decide to be the pieces, while others decide to be the player; how the chess Pieces are being moved against each other is instrumental to how the players win the games. Believe me, this is well illustrated in EVERYTHING that represents our today’s world, from politics, society, religion, culture and lifestyle.

Moving ahead, long before Kim Kardashian or any other celebrity of her status today, the urge for sex symbols had been implanted in western culture (and shamefully a global phenomenon today). The emergence of people such as Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis Presley, Sean Connery, Madonna, Michael Jackson and even the political ex-American President, John F. Kennedy indicates that our today’s generation was brewed into an already existing trend. The practice of including an alluring ‘face’ in everything has long been in existence.

Personally, I’ve always seen illogicality, preposterousness and hypocrisy in the argument between beauty & physical attractiveness on one side and talent, creativity or ‘inner beauty’ as they say on the other side. Both are must-pursued and must-have features of anyone willing to break the barrier of any hurdle life brings along wherever and whenever. There should be no comparison, evaluation or built scale of preference on both characteristics.

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People, specifically the younger generations must learn to understand that life will throw us with rigid and daunting challenges we have to throw everything at our disposal to survive and scale through its hurdles. Be it beauty, be it brain, be it personality, physical attractiveness, charisma, goodwill, moral behaviour or social acceptability; whatever it is you’ve got to flaunt, use it! and if and when you don’t have it? Seek it!

Although, I perfectly see the grounds of reasoning approached by Mrs Wright and others who feel “Inner beauty” should come ahead physical beauty, but where my disagreement comes in is simple; Let no one deprive those who have worked hard or were born naturally so, the privilege and prerogative to enjoy the advantages of an already established hypocrisy that has come to stay as part of our culture and society.

I am quick to remind girls who go around yelling “I don’t care about what people think about me” or “It’s my life” that there are grievous consequences for the actions you take today. It’s a girl’s choice to get inspired by the business entrepreneurship of Kim Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey or lazy her life all-around missing no episode of all reality shows on TV. It’s a choice to get inspired by the amount of time, energy, commitment and hard work these fabulous looking people put into work to become who they are or to decide if getting lazy, fat, obese and stupidly ridiculous by not missing out on anything that pops up on TV or cinema is the right choice to make.

Don’t go on Twitter, Facebook or any public utility screaming how important “Inner Beauty” is over physical beauty, that in my humble opinion is the first and foremost feature of inferiority complex. I mean no disrespect or insensitivity to the innocent disabled ones among us in society, but bitter truth remains, no one on earth wish to live a life of pity; be it from self or from society. So to those who rather than work on becoming fabulous thinks it’s less important and yet yell on its unimportance; my advice is simple! The world waits to pity no one and only appreciates anything beautiful EVEN WHEN IT HURTS!

Beauty pageant organisers and its entire industry community are a perfect illustration. They can preach all they want on how they aim at exposing talents and inner beauty, but we aren’t going to see a fat, obsessed or physically unattractive person winning any of such contests anytime soon; NO MATTER HOW ASTOUNDING SUCH PERSON’s TALENT IS.

From Travels to hotels, tourism, aviation, customer service, marketing, banking & finance, entertainment, sports, name it! The global corporate world wants visitors, guests and clients welcomed into their terrain by stunning, attractive and eye-catching personalities with tailored accents and highly charismatic personalities as well. Talk about the importance of physique in occupations and competitive world, who do we blame for being a threat to civilization that a 130kg and 6 feet personality is the average requirement of security outfits or an average requirement of certain sportsmen? No one! It’s a trend, a culture, an existing challenge we have to accept.

The highest paid and world’s most appreciated celebrities in global entertainment of today are also the ‘sexiest’ ones anyone can identify with. The debate doesn’t fall on if they are the most creative or necessarily the best at what they do; but checkout the most followed ones on social networks and let’s take it from there. It takes more than 1-in-10000 chances to battle your way top or pull the stunts British singers, Susan Boyle and Adele are pulling.

Ironically, I do not intend to defend Kim Kardashian or any of her illicit fame-hunting stunts, but one quick moral of this is simple – Who Am I at this point in time to question a lady who’s got an enviable 15 million followers on Twitter (one of the largest so to say). I only see her as an opportunist of a dysfunction world where human priorities are totally misplaced and the culprits should not be those at the earning but those at the losing end.

It’s such a dysfunction world that the way and manner people gain fame is far beyond mere condemnation and disapproval and are often at the height of immorality and crime. In the new age, reports of sex scandals and sex tapes are becoming a fast commodity, drugs and violence are well voiced in commercial music and songs, marital woes and relationship break-ups between celebrities gather massive hits than the socio-political decisions that directly affects the lives of today’s people; arrogance & pride of wealth, fame and fortune is loudly fledge what ‘celebrities’ engage in, but also preach out to their fans.

Very disheartening and demoralising to one’s sense of thoughts is a fact that these ‘threats to civilization’, theatrics and fame-hunting stunts pulled by these so-called celebrities are not forced so-to-say on anyone and where as I repeated earlier people decide to get exposed to a life of negativity is inexplicable. And considering the fact that the personalities (porn stars specifically) who pull such games up are oftentimes ready for the consequences of their actions, a moral of the story, again I insist should be people’s readiness to accept the consequences of their actions, including watching the happenings in other people’s lives while ignoring theirs.

Personally, I see life as a celebration and the happenings in our lives are enough to shape our orientations, teach and inspire us well enough on future decisions and issues that affect us. Paying huge & enormous focus to the happenings in other people’s lives is itself a threat. Celebrities and public figures are human beings and bound to either make mistakes or stupid/crazy/abominable decisions. Be it intentional or not, be it for commercial or for propaganda reasons aren’t meant to be the business of the general public and as much as a 72-day-old marriage is condemnable & unimaginable, why in the first place is a centre of attention directed on her (Kim Kardashian) personal life in the first place?

Society is not helping either and to a more laughable extent is when parents criticise celebrities and public personalities as endangering their children moments such celebrities are found wanting in usual acts; Whatever happened to “Charity begins at home”? Immoral discharge of characters on any young person allegedly copied or mentored upon by a public personality must be blamed on the parents and guardian of such person and not on such ‘public’ figure.

Here is a world where people will burden their kids with names of invisible people whose method and means in the rise to fame and fortune they know nothing about nor the route to accomplishment. Easy is it to dismiss the fact that there are often unseen and mysterious happenings behind the facade of smiles and eccentric appearances such figures display as well.

Parents sit around day in day out to watch late night TV shows with children without regards for the impact it has on kids and the younger generation. Parents disregard the contents of musical lyrics booming into the ears of their children and equally watch their kids admire passionately some people they see on TV screens without proper guidance and advises; hence, the real job of parenting which involves guidance, counselling, advices and  inspirations automatically transferred to an invisible parent in form of a ‘celebrity’.

The traditional and new (social) media community paying a wholesome amount of time and attention to people who use illicit means to gain fame and fortune should are also joint-culprits. Too much attention is being paid to mischievous happenings in our world while we ignore things that need urgent and serious attention. Who cares to know why on earth hundreds die daily from violence and bombings in Iraq or why the children in Somalia are dying from famine? Who’s ever going to read this article either without ‘Kim Kardashian’s name on the header?; I’m laughing and shrugging.

How Kim Kardashian or any other celebrity of her status and style is to be blamed for bad influence on civilization when the massive majority of us ignore ‘more’ (please note quotations) interesting, loving, passionate, educative and inspiring people in society confuses me. Could the entire society of followers (including but not limited to their fans, media and corporate world) of such people be wrong or are ‘we’ just the only sane ones out there? Maybe yes, maybe no but sometimes, Johnny Babybrain is probably of the opinion that It is legal to be illegal in an illegally programmed society.

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