EWW extra: Is feminism dead?

And did Kim Kardashian kill it?

Last week the Daily Mail announced that Kim Kardashian killed feminism.

According to Sarah Vine a columnist for noted Feminist publication The Daily Mail, feminism died this month when Kim Kardashian inevitably became a billionaire. I'll start by saying that 1) I already thought she was a billionaire and 2) this defence of Kim Kardashian doesn’t change my view that all billionaires should get the guillotine.

To be a billionaire in 2020 is revolting, but newsflash: It has always been revolting! The world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people! It's obscene. But if you're targeting Kim Kardashian and not Jeff Bezos your argument isn't against wealth hoarding. And if you're writing for the Daily Mail your argument isn't about feminism. Within this ghoulish intersection lies the column: Why Kim Kardashian's $1 billion has killed feminism.

The problem here, according to apparent “feminists” with Daily Mail columns, isn't really about her gross wealth: It's that Kim Kardashian is - wait for it - beautiful.

"I grew up in a time when girls were encouraged to think of themselves as something more than mere objects of desire. For me, as an awkward, bespectacled girl with a less than perfect shape, this represented a kind of hope. A sense that, whatever my physical drawbacks, such things were not the only measure by which a woman could achieve success, " Vine says.

Oh really. Come on now. We're all ugly Jan you're not special. And second of all - when were you born? And where? Were you born in some kind of cult completely separate from the real world where women have always been judged by their ability to be aesthetically pleasing?

"Being beautiful wasn't the only passport to fame and fortune - with hard work and application, any girl might achieve through wit and intelligence," Vine says. I think she has confused "hard work and application" and "wit and intelligence" with being white and wealthy.

Kim Kardashian isn't any different to any other woman who was born with wealth and family connections. Vine didn't pull herself up by her boot straps to work at The Daily Mail anymore than Kim Kardashian did the same to land a clothing line. Kim's faults according to Vine, a feminist, is that she doesn't have a "university degree and a fulfilling career" and she doesn't work hard.

Call me stupid but I figure not getting a massive loan to go to university is kind of clever. I also don't think being a columnist who runs down any women who dare to find success through using their assets is a particularly fulfilling career. But that's not all that annoys Vine. "In fact, what really gets my goat are those who claim that she is, in her own way, a feminist icon. No. Malala is a feminist icon. Margaret Thatcher is a feminist icon"

WHAT. MARGARET FUCKING THATCHER. I should just end this here right? I mean...Margaret God Damn Bloody Fucking Thatcher. But let's go on anyway.

"I don't hate her - how could I when I've never met her? But I do hate what she stands for: the paucity of aspiration and old-fashioned sexism she represents." Hmmmm the old-fashioned sexism she represents....I wonder if Vine is talking about how she has reduced a woman to her looks simply because she doesn't understand how a woman has used a society that reduces her only to her looks to her own advantage.

For as long as I can remember Kim Kardashian has irritated men and white women of a certain age who have a very narrow view of feminism. I remember the first time I defended her publicly years ago. I was immediately called a cunt by a man who was so infuriated that I would dare to disagree with him. Because he was a feminist after all! She drives those who love to defend the patriarchy completely crazy because she's succeeding despite the rules. People are meant to hate her! She showed her bare ass on a magazine! What a slut! The fact that people quite like watching her is infuriating and dumbfounding to them. Why doesn't everyone hate her? She's unashamedly sexual which is wrong!

I can hear folks already saying - I don't hate her for that. I hate her because she's famous for nothing. She doesn't work.

Well, let's look at Kimberly Noel Kardashian West shall we? In 2002, like many women she made a sex tape with her boyfriend - Ray J. She was 22 years old. Five years later, when she had already opened a boutique shop with her sisters, it was leaked in an act of revenge porn. This is something that also happens to a lot of women. Because she had access to expensive lawyers she went to court but eventually dropped the lawsuit. She was able to get a settlement though there's confusion over how much she got. Kevin Dickson, a former editor at In Touch Weekly, described calling Paris Hilton to say the sex tape was public: "Kim was crying in the background. She’d seen the story by then, and Kim’s saying, ‘It’s not me, it’s not me.’"

In the 14 years since the tape was leaked, I haven't once heard anyone criticise the other person in the tape. The one who likely released it. Kim Kardashian now has four children, has appeared in 15 reality television shows, four films, and 10 television shows. She has produced five television shows, appeared in six music videos, released a song, and three books. She has her own beauty line, her own shape wear line, her own fragrance line, a workout DVD series, she's been a guest host for Wrestlemania, a guest judge on America's Next Top Model, she has an app that earned US$1.6 million in its first five days of release, she's been a voice actor in an animated series, as well as running a fashion line she shares with her sisters (the Kardashian Kollection) and she models, writes, and has her various social media campaigns.

That uh kind of seems a little like a strong hustle to me? Doesn't it?

And yet, she's still called a whore, slut, whoreslut, and a vapid, talentless, awful bitch. And she's called that by women who are meant to be feminists and men trying to hide the fact that slut shaming is their favourite hobby. Don't get me wrong, there are legitimate things to criticise Kim Kardashian for - wealth hoarding, cultural appropriation, not using her platform for social justice, being married to an anti-abortion, anti-vaccination, Trump supporting asshole, for having a weird white slug couch in her minimalist home*....But criticising her for using the very thing she has spent her whole life being demeaned for? That's weak.

The truth is, if you think Kim Kardashian killed your feminism? It was already dead.

*FYI: This is the couch slug.