Marcel Winatschek

The Champagne Trick

Jean-Paul Goude photographed Kim Kardashian for PAPERMAG, and the image—Kim in a backless gown, a champagne glass balanced on her upturned ass like a party trick at the end of civilization—became the thing everyone was talking about for a week. The headline claimed she would break the internet. She basically did.

You already know who she is. If not from the reality show, the phone game, or the wedding to a man who declared himself a god in front of witnesses, then from whatever folder on your old bedroom PC still holds relics of the Paris Hilton era. Kim Kardashian has been unavoidable for so long that active hatred of her requires more effort than she’s worth.

What I can’t actually argue with is the sheer will of it. Getting to where she is—the magazine covers, the money, the cultural saturation—from where she started takes something rarer than talent: an absolute refusal to care what anyone thinks while appearing, at all times, to care deeply. She wanted something implausible and went and got it. The ass balanced the glass without spilling a drop. Enormous, deeply reluctant respect.