Praise for Kim Kardashian’s Skims ignores her family’s relationship with body augmentation

The latest Skims campaign sparks important questions

Kim Kardashian’s much-talked-about shapewear brand, Skims, made headlines in September for its latest campaign featuring her sister Kourtney Kardashian and close friend, Megan Fox. The two appear in an intimate embrace, wearing nothing but underwear. The campaign has received widespread praise from industry heavyweights like Cosmopolitan, Nylon, and InStyle, with many commentators lauding the pair’s physical appearance. However, important questions surrounding these images and their implications for viewers are missing from mainstream conversations.

The Kardashians’ relationship to body augmentation

The Kardashians are notorious for their association with body augmentation, beauty ideals, and the pressures these ideals often cause. As a brand devoted to dressing, shaping, and changing the body, Skims’ connection to this phenomenon is particularly concerning. Despite this, mainstream conversations about the campaign have overlooked the brand’s history and its impact on women’s bodies.

Promises made to women

Valued well above US$1 billion, Skims is now among the most successful and quickly growing shapewear brands. The brand’s growth can be attributed to its promises made to women – namely, that the purchase of its products can produce a figure and face closer in shape and size to the Kardashians. Skims’ images and online advertisements communicate this message, drawing viewers’ attention to an increasingly narrow waist and full hips like those Kim Kardashian first made famous.

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However, these promises are not real. The brand’s previous products, such as lip kits, vitamin supplements, and teas, have failed to deliver on their promises. Yet, media continue to lavish praise and admiration, as if these promises shouldn’t warrant some suspicion.

Understanding the beauty ideal

In my work as a researcher studying appearance and attractiveness, as well as their representation and reception across media platforms, I take questions related to beauty and its pressures seriously. I examine images and advertisements, as well as videos and online trends, to better understand how beauty has come to shape our mediascape and what this means for everyday viewers, including and especially young people who consume and engage with digital content.

Throughout my research, I observe a quintessentially Kardashian ideal, with an increasingly large number of social media users postured in ways that reproduce the sisters’ figures and faces. Online makeup tutorials and outfit shots dedicated to the sisters’ likenesses are popular, with everyday consumers tuning in to see how to achieve the Kardashian look.

The popularity of these images and videos reflects Kim and her sisters’ influence within the world of beauty, even as they continue to deny their role in its pressures. In my ongoing work with sociologists Shyon Baumann and Josée Johnston, young people often explain that the Kardashians define what it means to be beautiful today, drawing attention to the sisters’ full lips, round hips, and tapered waistlines.

One step forward and two steps back

To her credit, Kim’s work with Skims represents a step forward in she and her sisters’ enviable empire of brands and their relationship to beauty. The brand has a focus on more diverse bodies in many (if not most) of its images and advertisements online, and shapewear in a range of sizes and skin tones. In fact, consumers can shop up to sizes 4X and 5X across most product categories to find a solution for every body.

However, with this step forward, Kim has taken two steps back. As the brand’s messaging (however subtle) often suggests, women ought to rein in their figures and discipline their bodies if they are to be made beautiful, sculpted, and “solved.” This message implies that women’s bodies are necessarily flawed and in need of correction.

Though messages like this are not new in the world of beauty and fashion brands, their demands and attendant pressures from contouring the face to binding the belly have never been more persistent or damaging than they are today.

Conclusion

Skims’ latest campaign and the ensuing praise ignore the brand’s problematic relationship with body augmentation and the beauty ideal. As a society, we must begin to critically examine the messages we send to women and young people about their bodies and how to achieve beauty. It is not enough to simply acknowledge the brand’s diversity efforts; we must also challenge the harmful ideals that underpin its marketing and sales.

FAQs

Q: What is Skims?
A: Skims is a shapewear brand founded by Kim Kardashian.

Q: What is the controversy surrounding Skims’ latest campaign?
A: The campaign features Kourtney Kardashian and Megan Fox in intimate poses, raising questions about the objectification of women’s bodies and the pressure to conform to beauty standards.

Q: What is the Kardashian family’s relationship to body augmentation?
A: The Kardashians are known for their association with body augmentation, beauty ideals, and the pressures these ideals often cause.

Q: Why is Skims’ messaging problematic?
A: Skims’ messaging implies that women’s bodies are flawed and in need of correction, promoting unrealistic beauty standards and perpetuating harmful ideals about body shape and size.

Q: What can we do to challenge harmful beauty ideals?
A: We can start by critically examining the messages we send to women and young people about their bodies and how to achieve beauty. We must also support diverse representation in media and promote positive body image and self-acceptance.