The Kardashian-Jenners haven’t always been the shiny media machine they are today. Cast your mind back to the height of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, the long-running reality series that turned the family into household names and, in Kim and Kylie’s cases, billionaires, and you’ll remember a very different version of the family.
Now an old clip from an early noughties-era season of the show has resurfaced, reminding us all of exactly what was so unpalatable about the early days. While unsolicited commenting on women’s bodies was hardly unique to the era, casual sexism was particularly rampant in the '00s - including, in the first few seasons, the relentless jibes about Khloe Kardashian’s weight.
Much like it’s now incredulous to us that we were ever expected to believe the likes of Renee Zellweger's Bridget Jones orMartine McCutcheon’s Natalie (from Love, Actually) were fat, in the cold light of 2023 it’s patently obvious that early-era Khloe has a body to kill for. But that wasn’t the line viewers at the time were fed, and an old clip doing the rounds on social media makes for uncomfortable viewing.
In it, Caitlyn Jenner brazenly asks a then-23-year-old Khloe, ‘Don’t you think you could lose a few pounds?’
While Caitlyn attempts to insist this quite obviously deeply offensive line of enquiry is not, in fact, deeply offensive, Khloe scrambles to defend herself, pointing out her gym-honed body is ‘rock hard’ and that she’s wearing black because she’s ‘depressed’ – not, as Caitlyn obnoxiously assumes, because (as the 00’s adage goes), it’s ‘slimming’.
Even a teenaged Kylie knows better than to criticise the appearance of a young, impressionable woman, telling Caitlyn that her older half-sister is ‘perfect just as she is’.
Many in the comments have pointed out that older relatives commenting on younger, female family members’ bodies is inherently ‘inappropriate’, while others have defended Caitlyn.
Most of us will remember that rampantinsecurity came with the territory of being a woman in our teens and early-twenties (arguably, it never completely goes away) and Khloe, being a visible member of a family gaining exponential fame at the time, was more vulnerable than most.
She’s often spoken out about how being the ‘fat one’ in comparison to her more slender-boned sisters and the toll it took on her confidence. Caitlyn's throwaway comments assume that Khloe hadn’t already thought that she ‘could lose a few pounds’ – as if much of her entire existence wasn’t consumed with precisely that thought, as her subsequent comments have proved.
Nowadays, Khloe is much more likely to be criticised for being ‘too thin’, finding herself at the apex of the recent ‘heroin chic revival’ row which saw stale commentaries on women’s body types worm their way back into modern media.
While it’s unhelpful to make any assumptions about Khloe’s current health, what is clear is that Khloe’s most transformative years were dominated by a commentary that was wholly unnecessary and completely incongruous with reality. Scenes like these are familiar to most of us, and it’s impossible not to send your heart out to younger Khloe.