We have all done things that we wish we hadn't. We all have profound regrets. Some of us decide that the best way to move forward is to put our shame in a box, to pretend that the incident in question never happened. Some of us seek therapy, or find a friend to counsel us as we express our pain at a memory from the past. Most of us, though, are not reminded of these regrets in interviews or across social media every other day. Most of us don't have what we might perceive as the biggest mistakes of our lives captured on film. And Kim Kardashian, the reality star who has built a multi-million dollar fashion, beauty and lifestyle empire, has become a model of how to accept regret and to thrive in spite of it. Perhaps even because of it.
I'm talking, of course, about the sex tape. You know the one. In 2002, when Kim was 23 years old, she and then-boyfriend Willie Norwood, better known by his stage name, Ray J, filmed themselves having sex. Five years later, Vivid Entertainment released it to the public, and Kim was plunged into notoriety. Shortly after, Keeping Up With The Kardashians launched, becoming one of the most successful reality franchises of all time. It ends its twenty season run this week, and in its farewell reunion episode Kim was asked if she felt that its early prevalence was helped by the wave of publicity that came from the controversial tape. Would it have been as much of a sensation?
'Looking back, probably not,' Kim, now 40, conceded. She was asked if she has thought of what she would say to her children if they asked about it. 'I haven’t had to as of yet and luckily I think that so many years have gone on and so many things have happened positively that it really erases that,' she said. 'It is something I have to live with for the rest of my life.' She adds the classic: 'everything happens for a reason.'
It may seem like a platitude, or that she is just saying something that she knows people want to hear, but Kim's acknowledgement of the tape's role in laying the foundation for her long-term success and er acceptance of it as part of her legacy is really important. Because the way that women are demonised for daring to be sexual beings is still unacceptable, almost twenty years since Kim made this tape.
Teenage girls who have sent a private image of themselves to a friend or boyfriend and then found that photograph plastered all over school or shared widely online are made to feel that they were wrong to take the photo in the first place. In actual fact, of course, the person who distributed it further should be the ones held accountable and perhaps even prosecuted. Women who make money as sex workers, or have Only Fans accounts, are taunted or disrespected online and in person, told that they should be ashamed or embarrassed or afraid of how this endeavour could impact future job prospects. Actresses who took off their clothes for nude scenes early on in their career, often when they were unknown and straight out of drama school, have to tolerate stills of those scenes being printed in the tabloids when they have a big break.
The message is clear: in this society, women who commit their nude form, their love of sex, their erotic agency, deserve to have that haunt them forever. Kim has learned that the hard way, has faced it constantly and, in acknowledging its role in her career, refused to allow its shadow to dominate her life. She has allowed it into the room, rather than banishing it in shame.
Kim is many things. A TV icon. A designer. A businesswoman. A trainee lawyer. A mother. She is also the co-star of a famous sex tape. In accepting that her success has, partly, stemmed from that she shows women all over the world that sex does not equal shame, and that a whole, lucrative life can be built on something that you may, at first, view as a horrendous setback. Would the show that began her empire have been a hit without the sex tape publicity? No. But its longevity, its cultural influence, and its status as a springboard for Kim and her entire family's careers? That's all on Kim's resourcefulness and media savvy.
You can stream all seasons and episodes of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and spin off shows only on hayu
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