She can allow it to be photographed and Photoshopped. She can take pride in it and profit from it and predict that the mere sight of it unclothed will #BreakTheInternet.
What she can't do — isn't, I would argue, trying to do — is speak for anyone else.
"I like how a month ago all the female celebs were crying over their leaked nudes & now Kim K is just like 'Hello World, Full Frontal For Ya,'" tweeted one commenter Thursday, sounding a common refrain.
In other words: "Make up your mind, ladies: Do you want us staring at your assets or not?"
The answer — obvious to many, but not to enough — is that women don't speak as some sort of unified, amorphous, sexually confused blob. Each of us navigates the world with our own set of values and ambitions and proclivities and comfort zones.
The famous-for-being-famous 34-year-old chose to pose nude for Paper Magazine, which released two of its covers Wednesday, one with Kardashian's fully consenting bare bottom perched above the words "Break the Internet."
Whatever. Women and men have been posing nude since the beginning of time. Kardashians have been posing nude since the beginning of my Kardashian consciousness (konsciousness?).
These particular photos just happen to arrive smack in the middle of an international dialogue on the exploitation of women's bodies, from the catcalling video that went viral to the campus rape epidemic that has captured the White House's attention to the nude images stolen from more than a dozen celebrities' iCloud accounts.
We're grappling — loudly, messily — with our deeply ingrained notions of the female body as public property, ours for the taking. Women — and, increasingly, men — are finally speaking out against the belief that to be female is to invite judgment, comment, contact.
The Kardashian photos muddy those waters a bit. But they shouldn't.
It's lazy and wrongheaded to assume the actions of one person speak for the desires of another. All celebrities don't want their naked photos hacked just because one celebrity offers hers up willingly. All women don't want their bodies viewed as fair game just because some women profit from baring theirs.
Someone, somewhere along the way, taught Kim Kardashian that her body was the most interesting thing she has to offer the world. I doubt that's true, and I guess it's a little sad that she's not exploring some other pursuits. Then again, she'd probably think it's a little sad that I can't pay my Visa bill.
Thankfully, we don't speak for each other. Her body is her business. (And a lucrative one at that.)
My body (and my Visa bill) are mine. Her photos don't change that.
Heidi Stevens
Chicago Tribune
(TNS)
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Heidi Stevens writes for the Chicago Tribune.
