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    Categories: 2017

Entertainment: Don’t dismiss the Kardashians as selfie-obsessed celebs. This loyal, honest brood make terrific role models

The Sunday Times (London)
October 1, 2017 Sunday


Don't dismiss the Kardashians as selfie-obsessed celebs. This loyal,
honest brood make terrific role models

by: India Knight



It's the 10th anniversary of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which I
love. My mother and sisters don't love it, annoyingly, as my affection
is largely due to the show's depictions ofsister relationships and
motherdaughter dynamics. I put it on for mymother a few months ago and
said: "Come on. Just 10 minutes. Obviously we're not zillionaire
Californian reality stars with enormous bottoms, but there will be
things that resonate." But after about 30 seconds she reeled back,
horrified, and firmly said: "India, no!" She'd been profoundly
repulsed by the bottoms, or vulgarity, or somesuch.

The thing is, the series works at many levels, only one of which is
bottoms and bling. I'm not especially interested in what it says about
selfies or 21st-century fame, though I am wholly in favour of women
making gigantic amounts of money for themselves and their families,
including by monetising their own behinds or lipsticks or weight loss.
Kris, Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, Kendall and Kylie are all astute, clever
women.

What keeps me watching is the closeness of the family. I love how into
each other the sisters are. They enjoy each other's company hugely,
even when they're bickering. The show is like a bonkers, dysfunctional
Little Women. That level of sibling love and intimacy is absent from
TV dramas, soap operas or documentaries, as are women supporting each
other without an iota of envy or resentment. You don't see people
being passionately devoted to their mums unless they're fictional East
End gangsters, or being completely serene and loving as various bits
of their families splinter and reconfigure in a different format. The
Kardashians' capacity for love is great and adaptable; theirs is the
broadest tent. I also find it pleasing that they are constantly
eating.

They're very funny, even Kim, who can't move her beautiful face that
much (Kim: "Did you know that I'm, like, the number-one Google search
last week?" Kourtney: "Do you also know that you're number two on the
dumbest people?"). They're having a laugh - though not all the time:
traumatic, sad or frightening things happen to them too. Relationships
break up in terrible ways, people are left devastated. They seem
ridiculously plastic and fake, but also ridiculously human and real.
That's what keeps people watching.

Their closeness as a family seems culturally more European or Middle
Eastern than American (the late father, Robert Kardashian, was of
Armenian descent). I'm interested in their take onrace: they're often
berated for appropriating African-American culture, but doing that
skims too easily past the fact that if Kim, Kourtney andKhloé had been
transplanted to agrittier, less wealthy context as children, they are
(naturally) blackhaired and brown-skinned enough to have been called
names at school. It pleases me, a s a brown-skinned person , that
these essentially eastern-looking women are considered the acme of
beauty. It's a nice change from milk-fed blondes. I'd have liked to
have seen a bit of that when I was growing up.

As I was trying to show my mother, their deliberately melodramatic
lives are anchored in a healthy family model. They are completely
honest with each other. They have no secrets. They are monumentally
loyal, notably to their mother, Kris, who is also their manager. Kris
is hard as nails and faintly monstrous. She is also patient, loving
and kind, and an old-school matriarch. (Kris has lived about six
different lives, all of them fascinating.) I'm not suggesting that
there aren't better things you could do with your time - Alan
Hollinghurst's new novel is his best so far, in my view. But there are
lots of ways of understanding whatmakes us alike as human beings, and
you could do a lot worse than a leisurely veg on the sofa with the
Kardashians. Long may they reign .

Kanayan Tamar:
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