Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian, born on October 21, 1980, in Los Angeles, California, is an influential American television personality, model, and fashion entrepreneur. She gained widespread fame through the reality television series *Keeping Up with the Kardashians*, which premiered in 2007 and showcased the personal lives and dynamics of her family. Raised in a celebrity-centric environment, Kardashian's early career was marked by her work as a personal assistant to socialite Paris Hilton, and a leaked private video in 2007 propelled her into the public eye. Following this, she capitalized on her notoriety, launching various successful business ventures, including her beauty line KKW Beauty and the shapewear brand Skims, which became valued at over $4 billion.
Kardashian's influence extends beyond entertainment, as she has utilized her platform to advocate for criminal justice reform and has appeared in numerous media projects, including the 2022 series *The Kardashians* and *American Horror Story: Delicate*. While she is celebrated for her business acumen and impact on popular culture, she has also faced criticism for promoting unrealistic beauty standards and allegations of cultural appropriation. Kardashian's personal life, including her high-profile marriages and four children with rapper Kanye West, frequently garners media attention, making her a prominent, albeit polarizing, figure in contemporary culture.
Kim Kardashian
- Born: October 21, 1980
- Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California
Television personality
Place of birth: Los Angeles, California
Significance: Kim Kardashian is an American television personality, model, and fashion entrepreneur. She is best known for her appearances on the reality television series Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
Background
Kimberly Noel Kardashian was born on October 21, 1980, in Los Angeles, California, to Robert and Kris Kardashian. She is the second of four children, including Kourtney, Khloé, and Robert. From a young age, Kardashian was immersed in celebrity culture. In the 1990s, her father, an attorney with clients in the entertainment industry, gained notoriety when he represented National Football League player O. J. Simpson in a highly publicized murder trial. Kris, her mother, would later work as a television producer and create a reality television series focused on their lives.
Kardashian grew up in Beverly Hills, California. She went to grade school at the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, California. There, she was classmates with other celebrities of her generation, including hotel heir Paris Hilton. As a teenager, she attended Marymount High School and graduated in 1998. That same year, Hilton hired Kardashian as a personal assistant. Throughout the 2000s, their friendship was widely covered by the media.
In 2006, Kardashian, alongside her sisters Kourtney and Khloé, opened D-A-S-H, a clothing boutique in Calabasas, California.
Reality Television Celebrity
In early 2007, a private, sexually explicit video of Kardashian and her partner Ray J, a singer and songwriter, was leaked on the internet. Shortly after, Kardashian filed a lawsuit against the company that had released the video, Vivid Entertainment, which was a producer of adult films.
Soon after the scandal, Kardashian began working as a model; she also began appearing in films and television. Moreover, her mother, Kris, approached television producer Ryan Seacrest about the potential of using the family’s internal relationships and personal dramas as the premise of a reality series. In October 2007, Keeping Up with the Kardashians premiered on the E! network. The series gained immediate popularity despite poor critical reviews, and helped Kardashian boost her career as a model and fashion entrepreneur. She later produced fitness videos and lines of clothing and cosmetic products.
Although Kardashian was the focal point of the series, her siblings also became famous with the popularity of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Subsequently, Kardashian and her sisters collaborated on several business ventures. In 2010, Kardashian, alongside sisters Kourtney and Khloé, published Kardashian Konfidential, a New York Times best-selling autobiography. Keeping Up with the Kardashians generated the spin-offs Kourtney and Kim Take Miami, which ran from 2009 to 2013, and Kourtney and Kim Take New York, which ran from 2011 to 2012.
Throughout her career, Kardashian used social media to document her daily life and stoke her celebrity status. In June 2014, Kardashian released a smartphone app titled Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. The app—an immersive game in which players perform social activities to elevate their celebrity status—went on to become one of the highest-selling games on the Apple App Store, earning $1.6 million in its first week of sales.
In 2016, Kardashian was the victim of an armed robbery when she was staying at Hôtel de Pourtalès in Paris, France. According to police reports, the robbers bound and gagged Kardashian, and stole jewelry and other valuables, including a diamond ring originally purchased for more than $4 million. Before the robbery, Kardashian had posted a series of photos of herself at the luxury hotel on Instagram, a social media site. Law enforcement speculated that this was how the thieves knew of her location and the valuables she had.
In 2017, Kardashian launched the beauty line KKW Beauty and the fragrance line KKW Fragrance. (Production on those lines was later ended.) In 2019 she debuted a line of shapewear, initially known as Kimono but changed to Skims after allegations of cultural appropriation. Skims became enormously successful, valued at over $4 billion by 2024. In April 2020, she starred in and produced the documentary Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project, in which she advocates for reform in the US criminal justice system. Later that year, Kardashian and her family announced that Keeping Up with the Kardashians would end with its twentieth season in 2021.
Kardashian and her family soon returned to the reality television scene in April 2022, when their new series, titled simply The Kardashians, was released on the Hulu streaming service. Similar to their previous series, it focused on the lives of Kardashian and her siblings, including events such as Kardashian's hosting of Saturday Night Live in October 2021. In June 2022, Kardashian released a new luxury skincare line called SKKN by Kim.
Although Kardashian had appeared in several TV series and music videos, she began to focus more on her acting career in the 2020s. In 2023, she starred in the latest iteration of the long-running anthology series American Horror Story with a role in American Horror Story: Delicate. She also announced that she would produce and star in two future TV projects, the drama All’s Fair and the comedy The 5th Wheel.
Impact
Following her rise to fame in the early 2000s, Kardashian became a polarizing figure in the media. Widely recognized as a sex symbol and fashion influencer—even credited by some as almost single-handedly shaping female beauty ideals—she found millions of fans on social media. Keeping Up with the Kardashians won numerous Teen Choice Awards and People’s Choice Awards. Some observers hailed her as a highly successful businessperson, and she was named one of Time magazine's hundred most influential people in 2015. However, she was often called “famous for being famous,” a term used to describe celebrities who lack impressive career achievements. She also generated criticism on issues such as cultural appropriation and glorifying unrealistic standards of beauty.
Personal Life
In 1991, Kardashian’s mother, Kris, married Olympic medalist Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner. They had two daughters, Kendall and Kylie, before divorcing in 2015.
Due to the nature of her celebrity, Kardashian's romantic life often intersected with her place in the spotlight. In 2000 she married music producer Damon Thomas. They divorced in 2004. In 2011 Kardashian was briefly married to Kris Humphries, an American professional basketball player. In 2014 she married rapper and producer Kanye West. They had four children: daughter North, born in 2013; son Saint, born in 2015; daughter Chicago, born via surrogacy in 2018; and son Psalm, born via surrogacy in 2019. Rumors of an impending divorce between Kardashian and West made headlines in early 2021, and it was soon revealed that Kardashian had filed for divorce in February of that year. The couple's divorce finally became official in March 2022.
Bibliography
Brodesser-Akner, Taffy. “Where Would the Kardashians Be without Kris Jenner?” The New York Times, 8 May 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/magazine/where-would-the-kardashians-be-without-kris-jenner.html. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
Chuck, Elizabeth, and Corky Siemaszko. “Zsa Zsa Gabor: The Prototype of the Famous-for-Being-Famous Celebrity.” NBC News, 19 Dec. 2016, www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/celebrity/zsa-zsa-gabor-prototype-famous-being-famous-celebrity-n697776. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
Gharnit, Yasmeen. “Art Documentary ‘Famous for Being Famous’ Explores Fame in the 2000s.” Nylon, 20 Nov. 2015, www.nylon.com/articles/famous-for-being-famous-film. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
"How ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ Changed Everything." The New York Times, 9 Sept. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/style/kardashians-ending-takeaways.html. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
Isaac, Pauline Jayne. "Kim Kardashian and Kanye West: Everything We Know About the Divorce Rumors." Glamour, 4 Feb. 2021, www.glamour.com/story/kim-kardashian-and-kanye-west-divorce-rumors-explained. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
"Kim Kardashian." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm2578007/. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
Perez, Talia Klein. "The Kardashians: Inspiring or Damaging to Women?" The Perspective, 2020, www.theperspective.com/debates/entertainment/kardashians-inspiring-damaging-women/. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
Strugatz, Rachel. "Kim Kardashian's New Skin Care Line Is Not for Quitters." The New York Times, 1 June 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/06/01/style/kim-kardashian-skkn-skin-care-line.html. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.