By Damon Young
I am not a fan of Kim Kardashian. I am also not not a fan of Kim Kardashian. “Indifference” usually describes the feeling I’m attempting to convey, but ‘indifference” isn’t strong enough of a word to describe how indifferent I am. Basically, I feel the same way about Kim that I feel about bonsai trees — I know some people like looking at them and others enjoy chopping them down, but if bonsai trees stopped existing tomorrow, “Damn, that’s too bad about the bonsai trees” would be the last thought I ever had about them.
That being said, I am fascinated with how much other people seem to be fascinated with her — a fascination that usually manifests in three separate ways
1. People fascinated with “Kim Kardashian, incorporated”
2. People fascinated by the fact that Kim Kardashian is so damn famous
3. People fascinated by and upset with the fact that Kim Kardashian still manages to be sought after by men despite doing basically everything women have been taught not to do to have men still seriously interested in them
Number 3 is of particular interest to me because, well, women around me (and by “women around me” I mean “Black women”) seem to be very interested in getting to the bottom of this.
“Basically,” to paraphrase their collective wonderment “how does Kim continue to get so much love from so many high-status men, and would a Black woman be able to do the same things she has done and still be successful?”
“It’s kinda complicated” I reply, “but not really complicated at all”
“Huh?”
“Lemme explain…”
1. Regardless of how you personally feel about Kim Kardashian, it is a fact that there are very many people (men and women) who think she is absolutely gorgeous. In fact, there are people who don’t just feel that Kim is the best looking women they’ve ever seen, they think its not possible to be better looking than she is. She is literally their epitome of female beauty. This matters because of something we all should have learned on our first day of Kindergarten: Life isn’t fair, and pretty girls and cool/high status boys play by a different set of rules than the rest of us.
As long as Kim retains this status, there is nothing, I repeat, nothing, she can do to have men — well, some men (more on this below) — not interested in her. Just as a high-status man can continue Fawking up and still have women coming back (Hi, Stevie J), her looks give her a perpetual mulligan, and she will continue to get second, third, fourth and fourteenth chances that most other women won’t.
2. Also — and this is a fact that people seem to forget — Kim’s ‘relationship appeal” seems to be very limited. Yes, very many men and women find her very physically attractive, but the men she’s been publicly linked to — athletes, entertainers, and brothers of 90’s pop stars — are guys who, if they weren’t dating Kim, would probably be dating some other “urban model,” stripper, or groupie. There are no future doctors, lawyers, Obamas, or Cory Bookers lining up to wife Kim. In fact, even the more “corporate” Black athletes and entertainers, people like Jay-Z, Will Smith, and Lebron — men fiercely protective of their image — wouldn’t marry someone like her. Water tends to find its own level, and by dating several barely literate athletes and entertainers, Kim seems to have found hers.
I’m bringing this up because while many seem to think that non-Black women are given certain passes in regards to sex that Black women aren’t, women with public sexual histories lose points with men of all races, not just black men. Yes, it’s a double standard, but it’s a double standard that transcends race and culture.
As far as Kanye goes, I (obviously) don’t know what’s going on inside his head. But, I do know that this is a man who dated a Philly stripper for a few years and wrote a song on his last LP about falling in love with and marrying a adult video star. Basically, Kanye is just…different, and nothing about his relationship with Kim should surprise anyone who’s actually been paying attention.
Lastly…
3. If you flip through the pages of Jet Magazine or snoop through any of your friends’ Facebook profiles, you’ll undoubtedly come across some wedding albums. And, if you happen to know the people in the wedding albums, one thought may occasionally pop into your head:
“Wait…how the hell are they married? Wasn’t “The Hallway” her nickname in college? Who in their right mind would marry her???”
Yes, it is true that a person’s sexual past does have an effect on how they’re perceived. And yes, it’s also true that we’ve been taught that certain behaviors will make a person “undatable” or “unwifeable.” But people (men and women, White and Black) with full cemeteries in their closets get proposed to and married everyday.
I’m not saying that a person’s past doesn’t matter — trust me, everything that happened and is happening now affects everything that will happen in the future — but it’s not a death sentence either. Perhaps you won’t marry an NFL star or popular rapper, but, well, you probably weren’t going to anyway.
Pittsburgh native Damon Young (aka “The Champ”) is the co-founder of the ridiculously popular VerySmartBrothas.com. Their first book “Your Degrees Won’t Keep You Warm At Night: The Very Smart Brothas Guide To Dating, Mating and Fighting Crime” is available at Amazon.com
Image courtesy of WENN
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