So Kim Kardashian West is back — on social media, and with an instructive lesson in image management and control of the personal narrative. Oh, how we missed her!
In the months since her robbery at gunpoint during Paris Fashion Week in October, the woman who effectively built a brand on the art of oversharing has been notably absent from our phone screens. But because the digital world, like nature, apparently abhors a vacuum, into the self-imposed silence rushed speculation about Ms. Kardashian West’s (understandably) shaky emotional state, her husband’s hospitalization for exhaustion, whether or not it all might culminate in divorce, and existential questions about whether their tendency toward living in public contributed to the while darn thing.
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Now that’s over, thank goodness. On Monday, Ms. Kardashian West took a page from the Beyoncé playbook and, instead of granting a tell-all interview on “60 Minutes” or in Vanity Fair, took back control of her story line by posting a home video montage of what can only be termed Domestic Bliss on YouTube and a screen grab of the happy family on Instagram subtitled, with admirable restraint, “family.”
There they are, Kim and Kanye, snuggling with their children, North and Saint; here they are, drinking coffee at a folding table by the fireplace. There they are, boogying to a beat; here they are, hugging. There is Saint, toddling into his mother’s arms; and here is North, licking her reflection in the mirror! And so on.Continue reading the main story
Set to the tune of Jeremih’s "Paradise” (sample lyric: “Oh I knew life would be alright/But who could’ve known it’d be this good?”), it is unquestionably sweet. And Ms. Kardashian West’s return to social is being widely embraced throughout the blogosphere, with reactions being along the lines of, “Aw! My eyes teared up.” By Wednesday morning, the giant love-in was a Twitter Moment.
Indeed, it is interesting to note the difference between the responses to the current release, which are almost entirely positive, and the reactions to the robbery, which involved a surprising amount of meanspirited “you brought this on yourself” backlash (and then a backlash to that backlash, mostly courtesy of fellow celebrities who had experienced the downside of fame). The theory being that, by using social media to publicize her own glamorous, flesh-and-diamond-filled life, Ms. Kardashian West was, in effect, playing with fire, and everyone could now wag a holier-than-thou finger at her.
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