She Turned Around

If you assumed the champagne-glass-on-the-ass shot was the full extent of what Kim Kardashian had planned for PAPERMAG, she would like to clarify that she also has a front side. Jean-Paul Goude pointed the camera the other direction, and the internet, which had barely caught its breath from round one, went down again.

Her body has been surgically revised so many times that "natural" is a generous word for it. The fame is as calculated as anything in contemporary media. None of that changes the fact that I’ve been watching the sustained cultural operation of Kim Kardashian for a decade now and find myself, against all prior conviction, in something like awe. She wanted a specific, implausible thing—not just fame but a particular kind of total, unavoidable, historically scaled fame—and she built it from scratch while half the world actively wished her failure. That requires a will most people reserve for nothing.

I bought the issue. The photos look exactly as good in print as they do online, which the magazine claims and which is, unusually, true. All prior contempt hereby surrendered. Long may she reign.