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Dekonstructing the Kardashians coming soon.

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Endnotes

Part I

3 Fretting over dress measurements: The Kardashians, “What’s More American Than Marilyn Monroe?” Nov. 3, 2022.
3 originally debuted by Marilyn: Maryrose Lane Grossman, “Happy Birthday, Mr. President!,” May 21, 2020, JFK Library Archives.
3 “You can put lipstick on a pig”: Linda Hopkins, comment on “Kim Kardashian Evokes Marilyn Monroe and We Get to Judge,” New York Times, May 19, 2022.
3 “It was so disrespectful”: @laura_gee13, Twitter, June 13, 2022, twitter.com.
3 “Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala Diet”: Michelle Konstantinovsky, “Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala Diet Stunt Is Both Outdated and Alarming,” Glamour, May 3, 2022.
4 “It makes perfect sense”: @MisterPreda, Twitter, May 3, 2022.
4 “person who is so celebrated”: Casillo, email interview by author, Oct. 31, 2022.
4 “By virtue of her familiarity”: S. Paige Baty, American Monroe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 39.
4 Blonde, the Netflix original: Blonde (Plan B Entertainment, 2022).
4 the film was not well received: Dani Di Placido, “The Big Backlash to Netflix’s ‘Blonde,’ Explained,” Forbes, Sept. 30, 2022.
4 “Authorings of Marilyn”: Baty, American Monroe, 37.
5 “signs that are seemingly straightforward”: E. M. Griffin, “Semiotics of Roland Barthes,” in A First Look at Communication Theory, 8th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011), 332.
5 signed on to coproduce and star: Rick Porter, “Halle Berry, Glenn Close to Star with Kim Kardashian in Hulu Legal Drama from Ryan Murphy,” Hollywood Reporter, July 8, 2024.
6 Cambridge Dictionary says: Cambridge Dictionary, “new media,” dictionary.cambridge .org.
6 “about when the ‘mobile revolution’ began”: Kevin McSpadden, “Shorter Attention Span,” Time, May 14, 2015.
6 “The mass media have helped”: Baty, American Monroe, 11.
7 Marilyn Monroe’s estate released: “Marilyn Monroe’s Estate Gives Big Thumbs Up over Kim K Wearing Dress,” TMZ, May 4, 2022.
7 In a viral April 2021 video: @mizfit, “Unpopular Opinions: Kardashian/Jenner Edition,” TikTok, April 20, 2021.
8 “READ THEM BESTIE”: @hannahrenee231 comment on TikTok “Unpopular Opinions,” TikTok, April 20, 2021.
8 “They are billionaires”: @zombiepau comment on “Unpopular Opinions,” TikTok, April 20, 2021.
8 wear a white wig and corset: Sam Reed, “The Beauty Looks from Kim Kardashian’s Bizarre New Ad, Dissected,” Hollywood Reporter, July 29, 2015.
9 “blueprint”: “The Blueprint,” Know Your Meme, April 20, 2020, knowyourmeme.com.
9 “No age group has ever”: Rebecca Jennings, “Fashion Is Just TikTok Now,” Vox, Feb. 1, 2022.
9 One popular tweet: @dykeangst, Twitter, April 20, 2020.
9 “You don’t really act”: “Barbara Walters Presents: The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2011,” ABC News, 2011.
10 She donned a perfect replica: @KimKardashian, “My Fave Selena,” Twitter, Nov. 1, 2017.
11 “For an ‘Armenian’ ”: @AhMazingLif3, Twitter, Nov. 1, 2017.
11 “Damn bitch”: @MarriedToThaMob, Twitter, Nov. 1, 2017.
11 “publicity is, in essence”: John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972), 139, 130.
12 “Bimbo Summit”: Maureen Callahan, “3 Bimbos of the Apocalypse,” New York Post, Nov. 29, 2006.
12 “I can see how appealing”: Madison, interview by author, Sept. 9, 2021.
12 they twinned in velour sweatsuits: @KimKardashian, “Besties for Life!!! Me and @parishilton in Our Skims Velour,” Instagram, Oct. 16, 2020.
12 This incited headlines: Kurt Schlosser, “Kim Kardashian Selfie Mirrors Famed Elizabeth Taylor Pose,” Today, Dec. 10, 2013; IDLYITW, “Kim Kardashian Thinks She’s Elizabeth Taylor,” Mandatory, Dec. 15, 2011, www.mandatory.com.
12 “at school of history”: Berger, Ways of Seeing, 140.
13 “Because for every pic of Lindsay Lohan”: @tabloidarthist, Twitter, Nov. 2016, x.com/tabloidarthist.
14 “The ‘content’ of a medium”: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), 32.
14 “speak[s] of the future”: Berger, Ways of Seeing, 130.
14 “people who have apparently”: Berger, Ways of Seeing, 131.
15 “postmodern myth”: Georges-Claude Guilbert, Madonna as Postmodern Myth (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002).
15 “The paparazzi . . . empower us”: Kanye West interview, The Breakfast Club, Power 105.1, 2013.
15 “We’re organizing ourselves”: Claire Cain Miller, “Why BuzzFeed Is Trying to Shift Its Strategy,” New York Times, Aug. 12, 2014.
16 “Nobody wants to be a shill”: Andrew Rice, “Does Buzzfeed Know the Secret?,” New York, April 5, 2013.
16 “late capitalism not only”: Jonah Peretti, “Capitalism and Schizophrenia,” Negations 1, no. 1 (1996).
16 “Paging through a fashion”: Peretti, “Capitalism and Schizophrenia.”
18 “They say that stars”: Jean Baudrillard, America (London: Verso Books, 1989), 56.
18 a platform that had popped off: Brian Kenny, “SXSW Helped Launch Twitter and They Never Looked Back,” Harvard Business School, March 17, 2015.
19 Vogue Brasil styled Kim: Josh Duboff, “Kim Kardashian ‘Channels Marilyn Monroe’ on Cover of Vogue Brazil,” Vanity Fair, May 27, 2015.
19 “Blasphemy!”: @taknachance, Twitter, May 27, 2015.
19 “I can only hope”: IT Professional (@mattblax), Twitter, May 27, 2015.
19 “kissing Hitler”: Anthony Summers, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 188.
19 “the stupidest, most self-indulgent”: Colin Clark, My Week with Marilyn (New York: Weinstein Books, 2011), 74.
20 “I see her as a representation”: Chris Gardner, “ ‘The Future Is Here’: A Design Conversation with Kanye West,” Hollywood Reporter, April 13, 2018.
20 “I have advice”: Kim Kardashian’s Business Advice, interview by Variety, March 9, 2022, YouTube.
20 “Pattern perception increases”: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2010), 67.
21 “A novel, a story, a myth, or a tale”: Taleb, Black Swan, 69.
21 “In this electric age”: McLuhan, Understanding Media, 57.
22 “I wasn’t looking”: Till, interview by author, Feb. 9, 2023.
22 “There is a multilayering”: Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
23 “de-sequenced, including past, present, and future”: Manuel Castells, “Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society,” British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 1 (2000): 13.
24 “betweenness centrality”: Christopher Till, “Why Is Kim Kardashian Hanging Out with Émile Durkheim on Twitter?,” This Is Not a Sociology Blog (blog), Oct. 22, 2016.
25 downloaded 850 million times: John Koetsier, “Here Are the 10 Most Downloaded Apps of 2020,” Forbes, June 18, 2021.
26 “align the forces of supply and demand”: Lian Parsons, “Harvard Professor Says Surveillance Capitalism Is Undermining Democracy,” Harvard Gazette, March 4, 2019.
26 “tune, herd, and condition our behavior”: Parsons, “Harvard Professor.”
26 Kim publicly bought: Christian Allaire, “Kim Kardashian Now Owns a Piece of Princess Diana’s Wardrobe,” Vogue, Jan. 18, 2023.
27 Jonah Peretti announced: Noah Sheidlower and Alex Sherman, “BuzzFeed Will Lay Off 15% of Staff, Shutter Its News Unit,” CNBC, April 20, 2023.
27 “Audiences will begin”: Caitlin Huston, “BuzzFeed News Shutting Down amid Major Layoffs,” Hollywood Reporter, April 20, 2023.
27 “Kim is a hybrid”: “Ye Talks About His Spirituality,” Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox News, Oct. 7, 2022.
27 “Honey—I’m the Jackie”: The Kardashians Season 2 Official Trailer, Hulu, 2022.
28 “Kris Jenner called”: The Kardashians, “I Never Thought I’d See the Day,” Nov. 9, 2022.
28 “I’m a little nervous”: “I Never Thought I’d See the Day.”
28 “It was designed for [Marilyn]”: Maureen Lee Lenker, “Bob Mackie Says Kim Kardashian Wearing Marilyn Monroe’s Gown Was a ‘Big Mistake,’ ” Entertainment Weekly, May 16, 2022.
28 “Heritage must be understood”: “About the Use of a Historic Dress That Belonged to Marilyn Monroe,” ICOM: International Committee for Museums and Collections of Costume, Fashion, and Textiles, May 9, 2022.
28 “What withers in the age”: Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Techno logical Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, ed. Michael William Jennings et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2008), 22–23.
29 “In even the most perfect”: Benjamin, Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, 22.
29 a textile that is no longer made: Teri Agins, “The Sultan of Sequins Opens His Vault,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 17, 2005.
29 “I set my mind”: The Kardashians, “It’s Met Monday!,” Nov. 17, 2022.
30 as a condition of the Dress’s lease: Chioma Nnadi, “Kim Kardashian Takes Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’ Dress Out for a Spin,” Vogue, May 3, 2022.
30 “Industrial modernity”: Lutz Koepnick, On Slowness: Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 15.
30 “Modernity brought the thrill”: Koepnick, On Slowness, 15.
31 “extraordinary drama of luck”: James N. Gregory, “Shaping California History” (1993), faculty.washington.edu.
31 In 1877, the landscape photographer: Anthony W. Lee, introduction to Muybridge and Mobility, by Tim Cresswell and John Ott (Oakland: University of California Press, 2022), 1.
31 What resulted was: Tim Cresswell, “Visualizing Mobility,” in Cresswell and Ott, Visualizing Mobility, 41.
31 The horror auteur Jordan Peele: Ben Kenigsberg, “ ‘Nope,’ Eadweard Muybridge, and the Story of ‘The Horse in Motion,’ ” New York Times, July 22, 2022.
32 Legend has it: Martin Loiperdinger, “Lumière’s Arrival of the Train: Cinema’s Founding Myth,” Moving Image 4, no. 1 (2004): 89–118.
32 Finally, in 1905: Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System: A History (London: British Film Institute, 2005), 11.
32 “When we started”: “The Final Curtain Part 1,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, June 17, 2021.
32 “During 1907”: Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, 22.
33 “I was sure that”: Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, 15.
33 But New York City: Peter Decherney, Hollywood’s Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 11.
33 “its varied terrain and eclectic architecture”: Los Angeles Plays Itself (Netflix, 2004), 19:13–19:58.
33 In fact, in 1914: Melvyn Stokes, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation: A History of “the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 93.
33 raking in an estimated $50–$100 million: James Monaco, How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 262.
34 “It is all so terribly true”: Stokes, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, 111.
34 At the time of: “$12,500,000 Merger of Film Companies,” New York Times, June 29, 1916.
34 The mobility that: Jovanni Perez, “The Los Angeles Freeway and the History of Community Displacement,” Toro Historical Review 3, no. 1 (2017): 2.
34 “the stacking, as it were, of the parts of an industry”: Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 88–89.
35 “The best-known woman”: Eileen Whitfield, Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1997), 131.
35 to star in Biograph pictures: Whitfield, Pickford, 80.
35 “I played scrubwomen”: Mary Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), 113.
35 “Studios were leery”: Susan J. Douglas and Andrea McDonnell, Celebrity: A History of Fame (New York: New York University Press, 2020), 93.
35 “the girl with the curls”: George Tiffin, A Star Is Born: The Moment an Actress Becomes an Icon (London: Head of Zeus, 2015), 18.
35 “The cinematic apparatus”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 92.
36 It wouldn’t be long: Christel Schmidt, ed., Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), 35.
36 the first star to lay hands: Stacey Endres and Robert Cushman, Hollywood at Your Feet: The Story of the World-Famous Chinese Theatre (Los Angeles: Pomegranate Press, 1992), 58.
36 “Mary Pickford Sees Talkies”: “Mary Pickford Sees Talkies as Lipstick on Milo,” Los Angeles Times, March 18, 1934, 1.
36 grossed $1.4 million: Whitfield, Pickford, 262.
36 Along with Charlie Chaplin: Schmidt, Mary Pickford, ix.
36 She’d also eventually: J. Y. Smith, “Film Star Mary Pickford, ‘America’s Sweetheart,’ Dies,” Washington Post, May 30, 1979.
37 “You know, for years”: Albin Krebs, “Adolph Zukor Is Dead at 103; Built Paramount Movie Empire,” New York Times, June 11, 1976.
37 “chaperoned . . . sorority”: “YWCA Hollywood Studio Club Historical Marker,” Historical Marker Database, Jan. 29, 2024.
37 where Marilyn Monroe would one day stay: Cari Beauchamp, “The Lost History of L.A.’s Women-Only Hollywood Studio Club,” Vanity Fair, Dec. 10, 2019.
37 Sergei Eisenstein wrote: Sergei Eisenstein, Selected Works, vol. 1, Writings, 1922–34, ed. and trans. Richard Taylor (London: BFI Publishing, 1988), 163.
37 “I used to sit in the window”: Marilyn Monroe and the Camera (London: Schirmer Art Books, 1989), 15.
37 Movie attendance has doubled: Richard Butsch, “American Movie Audiences of the 1930s,” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 59 (2001): 108.
38 “Since the system needed”: Jeanine Basinger, The Star Machine (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 16.
38 “It was a complete city”: Scott Eyman, Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 3.
38 “committees and investigations”: Perez, “Los Angeles Freeway and the History of Community Displacement.”
38 “due to defense”: Perez, “Los Angeles Freeway and the History of Community Displacement.”
38 “inspected and sprayed”: Michael Beschloss, “Marilyn Monroe’s World War II Drone Program,” New York Times, June 3, 2014.
39 “to snap some fresh”: Beschloss, “Marilyn Monroe’s World War II Drone Program.”
39 “I snapped her picture”: David Conover, Finding Marilyn: A Romance (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1981), 7.
39 “autopia”: Jeremiah B. C. Axelrod, Inventing Autopia: Dreams and Visions of the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).
39 “basic function of media”: McLuhan, Understanding Media, 146.
39 “It was not until the advent”: McLuhan, Understanding Media, 90.
40 “The railroad next”: McLuhan, Understanding Media, 164.
40 a 1967 documentary: This Is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is the Massage (NBC TV, 1967).
40 “global village”: McLuhan, Understanding Media, 46.
40 many claim it was Al Gore: Richard Wiggins, “Al Gore and the Creation of the Internet,” First Monday 5, no. 10 (2000).
40 “We shape our tools”: John M. Culkin, “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan,” Saturday Review, March 18, 1967, 51–53, 70–72.
40 the Latin root of the word “metaphor”: McLuhan, Understanding Media, 91.
40 In 1948, Marilyn Monroe moves: Marilyn Monroe and the Camera, 18.
41 “Fox, experienced at grooming”: Basinger, Star Machine, 125.
41 Grauman’s Chinese Theatre: Christina Rice, Mean . . . Moody . . . Magnificent! Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2021), 170.
41 She’s introduced to the Madison Square Garden: J. Randy Taraborrelli, The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2009), 4.
42 “is a participant form”: McLuhan, Understanding Media, 235.
42 “cartoonified” media industry: Kwame Opam, “ ‘It’s the Age of the Self’: How Kim Kardashian Gamified Her Life and Made $100 Million Doing It,” Verge, June 27, 2016.
42 a computer game released by Sierra: “New Software,” Fresno Bee, Sept. 29, 1990.
43 “You’re doing amazing”: “Birthday Suit,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Nov. 4, 2007.
43 “Kanye’s definitely inspired me”: “Kanye Raids Kim’s Closet,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, E! Entertainment, 2012.
43 Balmain’s creative director: “Balmain Is Designing Exclusive Pieces for Kim Kardashian’s Game,” Hollywood Reporter, Feb. 3, 2016.
44 “extension of the skin”: McLuhan, Understanding Media, 114.
44 “She’s turned a video game”: Opam, “ ‘It’s the Age of the Self.’ ”
45 an Adidas factory somewhere in China: Nada Farhoud, “Workers Making Kanye West’s £150 Yeezy Trainers Are Paid Just £147 a MONTH,” Mirror, April 12, 2017.
45 “I would love to come back”: @krazykinger, “I Stayed in the Marilyn Monroe Suite! Wow, Amazing Room! Review of The Hollywood Roosevelt,” Tripadvisor (blog), Aug. 28, 2017.
46 “has good retention because it doesn’t break emergence”: James Liu, “Why Is the Kim Kardashian Game So Successful?,” Forbes, July 28, 2014.
46 SKIMS would partner with Swarovski: Ingrid Vasquez, “SKIMS and Swarovski Dropped a Marilyn Monroe–Inspired Dress—and It’s Already Sold Out,” People, Nov. 7, 2023.
46 no fewer than ten times: “It’s Met Monday.”
46 “The runway is where”: Julia Szabo, “The Anatomy of a Moment,” Washington Post, Sept. 10, 1995.
47 A video by Ashley Ward: @ashlaward, “Take a Second and Listen,” TikTok, May 26, 2020, www.tiktok.com/@ashlaward.
47 “Main character moments”: Kyle Chayka, “We All Have ‘Main-Character Energy’ Now,” New Yorker, June 23, 2021.
47 “A fashion moment”: Simon, interview by author.
49 At the dawn of the twentieth century: Charles C. Mann, “What if We Never Run Out of Oil?,” Atlantic, April 25, 2013.
49 “float to victory”: “ ‘Floated to Victory on a Wave of Oil’: Earl Curzon Tells How Allied Ingenuity Overcame Petroleum Crisis of 1916,” New York Times, Nov. 23, 1918.
50 “To say simply that Orientalism”: Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 39.
50 “you had to be careful”: Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 109.
51 “Irish name, an outsider’s name”: Gabler, Walt Disney, 112.
51 “maximum ease of animation”: Gabler, Walt Disney, 113.
51 “We just make a Mickey”: Gabler, Walt Disney, 151.
51 “Some psychological approaches”: Gabler, Walt Disney, 152.
52 “One distributor,” Gabler writes: Gabler, Walt Disney, 130.
52 “casual sadism”: Gabler, Walt Disney, 127.
52 “borrowed . . . from notable figures”: M. Thomas Inge, “Mickey Mouse,” in A Mickey Mouse Reader, ed. Garry Apgar (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014), 342.
53 “racially coded”: Nicholas Sammond, Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2015), 220.
53 “Like Felix, Bimbo, Oswald”: Inge, “Mickey Mouse,” 341.
53 “Arab Christians from the Ottoman”: Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova, “Middle Eastern and North African Immigrants in the United States,” Migration Policy Institute, June 3, 2015.
53 “aliens” could not: Earlene Craver, “On the Boundary of White: The Cartozian Naturalization Case and the Armenians, 1923–1925,” Journal of American Ethnic History 28, no. 2 (2009): 32.
54 “As debate on a restrictive”: Craver, “On the Boundary of White,” 32.
54 “Lawyers and applicants”: Sarah M. A. Gualtieri, Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).
54 One landmark case occurred in 1925: Craver, “On the Boundary of White,” 37.
55 “after four hours of testimony”: Gualtieri, Between Arab and White, 61.
55 “four monolithic”: Gualtieri, interview by author, May 23, 2023.
55 the Syrian grocer Nola Romey: Gualtieri, Between Arab and White, 113–34.
55 Khalid Jabara was murdered: Christine Hauser, “Oklahoma Man Is Charged with Killing Lebanese-American Neighbor,” New York Times, Aug. 23, 2016.
56 “a mouse without a core”: “Neal Gabler, Author of ‘Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination,’ ” The Open Mind, PBS, Nov. 9, 2006.
56 “Throughout 1932”: Gabler, Walt Disney, 200.
56 By 1932, one million people: Richard deCordova, “The Mickey in Macy’s Window,” in Apgar, Mickey Mouse Reader, 251.
56 the Mickey Mouse wristwatch: Joshua Glenn, “Post–Mickey Mice,” HiLoBrow (blog), May 22, 2023.
56 the 1934 Cole Porter song: Glenn, “Post–Mickey Mice.”
56 “He has the German feeling”: Esther Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory, and the Avant-Garde (London: Verso, 2002), 128.
57 “These two films are about”: Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands, 140.
57 “Disney’s rise in the 1950s”: Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, 154.
57 “There’d be no beautiful studio”: Barbara Berch Jamison, “Of Mouse and Man, or Mickey Reaches 25,” in Apgar, Mickey Mouse Reader, 183.
57 “Roy, by his own admission”: Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, 269.
58 “We have no obligation”: Kim Masters, The Keys to the Kingdom: How Michael Eisner Lost His Grip (New York: W. Morrow, 2000), 103.
58 “at his best replicating Disney’s past”: Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, 272.
59 “Had the U.S. done nothing”: Chuck Klosterman, The Nineties (New York: Penguin Press, 2022), 56.
59 What made coverage of this war unique: Klosterman, Nineties, 58–59.
60 “the ineradicable distinction”: Said, Orientalism, 42.
60 “Jasmine is represented according to”: Abderrahmene Bourenane, “Authenticity and Discourses in Aladdin (1992),” Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research 13, no. 2 (2020): 245.
60 “animation in the United States”: Paul Wells, Animation and America (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), 1.
60 “when Walt asked for realism”: Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation (New York: Abbeville Press, 1981), 65–66.
60 “12 Principles of Animation”: Thomas and Johnston, Illusion of Life, 47.
60 “tools of communication are the symbols”: Thomas and Johnston, Illusion of Life, 16.
60 “symbolizes pure evil”: Bourenane, “Authenticity and Discourses in Aladdin,” 245.
61 “Armenia is the cool thing now”: “Kim’s Calendar for Reggie,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, May 11, 2008.
61 “I am so proud”: @KimKardashian, Twitter, April 24, 2009.
61 In 2010, she and Kourtney: “Kourtney & Kim Kardashian on Lopez Tonight,” Lopez Tonight, TBS, Aug. 24, 2010.
62 “Arab American feminist thought”: Amira Jarmakani, “Arab American Feminisms,” in Arab & Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, & Belonging, ed. Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Christine Naber (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2011), 234.
62 The “white” Arab: Jarmakani, “Arab American Feminisms,” 229.
62 “princesses are everywhere”: Miriam Forman-Brunell and Rebecca Hains, introduction to Princess Cultures: Mediating Girls’ Imaginations and Identities, ed. Miriam Forman-Brunell and Rebecca Hains (New York: Peter Lang, 2015), xi.
62 a 2017 study: Ben Flanagan, “Poll: 81% of Americans Cannot Identify Arab World on Map,” Arab News, May 2, 2017.
62 “what are the poles”: Gualtieri, interview by author, May 23, 2023.
62 “I am Armenian, so of course”: “Kim Kardashian: A Head for Business and a Bod for Sin,” Allure, Sept. 2010.
62 “Her hips grew”: Lauren Michele Jackson, “How Kim Kardashian West Came to Represent America,” Slate, Nov. 8, 2019.
63 “In newsreels”: Said, Orientalism, 287.
63 In 2014, Rolling Stone published: Rob Sheffield, “The Kardashians: The Egos That Ate America,” Rolling Stone, Sept. 10, 2014.
64 “Even Kris Jenner Agrees”: Sharon Kanter, “Even Kris Jenner Agrees: The Kardashians ‘Are Kind of Everywhere,’ ” People, Nov. 1, 2017.
64 “If Kim were truly white”: Lauren Michele Jackson, White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue . . . and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2019).
64 “Break the Internet” cover: Amanda Fortini, “Break the Internet: Kim Kardashian,” PAPER, Nov. 12, 2014.
64 “I woke up like disss”: @kyliejenner, Instagram, July 11, 2015.
65 As Meredith Jones: Meredith Jones, “Ghost in the Glitterati: Kim Kardashian at the Met Gala,” Beauty Chronicles, podcast, accessed Sept. 13, 2024.
66 “The image of the desirable female body”: Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood & Corporate Power (Media Education Foundation, 2001), 12:01–12:13.
66 “tries Botox”: “Botox and Cigarettes,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Sept. 12, 2010.
66 reanimated as a hologram: “Happy 40th Birthday, Kim!,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Oct. 21, 2020.
66 Kris pranking Khloé: “A Short-Term Fight,” The Kardashians, Nov. 9, 2023.
67 “The existence of Mickey Mouse”: Walter Benjamin, “Experience and Poverty,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, ed. Marcus Paul Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, vol. 2.2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1999), 734.
67 “The ancient truth”: Benjamin, Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, 38.
67 “Sigmund Freud’s description of humor”: Sammond, Birth of an Industry, 30.
68 “I think people might not”: Jeremy O. Harris and Douglas Greenwood, “Kim Kardashian West: ‘People Might Not Get That We’re In on the Joke,’ ” i-D, Dec. 13, 2021.
68 “mortifying”: “Big Fan: Kim Kardashian West,” Big Fan, ABC, Jan. 16, 2017.
68 “Life can be a fairy tale”: Peter Sblendorio, “Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner Didn’t Give Permission to Domestic Violence Campaign That Used Their Photos: Report,” New York Daily News, Dec. 1, 2015.
68 The Sun published digital maps: Peter Allen, “Kim Kardashian Gunpoint Robbery ‘Mastermind’ Reveals Star’s Online Jewellery Boasts Made Her an ‘Easy Target,’ ” U.S. Sun, Sept. 15, 2020.
69 “This Halloween it’s all about the #Hallomeme”: Neha Prakash, “WTF: There’s Now Totally Inappropriate ‘Kim Kardashian Robbery’ Halloween Costume,” Glamour, Oct. 11, 2016.
69 “To the extent that cartoons do more”: Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), 110.
70 “Now you know Kim loves Halloween”: Erin Donnelly, “Kim Kardashian Resurfaces to Share Family Halloween Costume Pictures,” Refinery29, Nov. 12, 2016.
70 the robbers knew better: “Paris,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, March 19, 2017.
71 working with the then-president: “Kim Kardashian Asks Trump to Pardon Alice Marie Johnson,” BBC, May 30, 2018.
71 featuring Johnson in a SKIMS: “Freed Prisoner Alice Johnson Models Kim Kardashian West’s Lingerie,” BBC, Aug. 30, 2019.
71 meeting with the president of Armenia: “Fights, Friendships, and Fashion Week, Part 2,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, April 2, 2020.
72 “The wife’s got a big butt”: “Chicago Loyalty,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, March 31, 2019.
72 hosted Saturday Night Live: “Kim Kardashian West/Halsey,” Saturday Night Live, Oct. 9, 2021.
74 Kris, who divorced her first husband: Miranda Siwak, “Kris Jenner, Caitlyn Jenner’s Ups and Downs Through the Years,” Us Weekly, Nov. 25, 2022.
74 “It’s like a brand”: “The Former Mrs. Jenner,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, June 26, 2011.
74 TMZ reporters stopped Kerry Kennedy: “Robert F. Kennedy’s Daughter: Don’t Compare OUR FAMILY to the Kardashians,” TMZ, June 6, 2013.
74 “Stay tuned!”: Lauren Pulte, “Kim Kardashian, Democrat, on Running for Mayor: ‘Stay Tuned,’ ” Politico, April 28, 2012.
74 “I’m the President”: Justin Ravitz, “Jimmy Kimmel, President Obama Mock Kim Kardashian,” Us Weekly, April 29, 2012.
75 “Kim Kardashian? Really?”: Susan Milligan, “The Real Problem with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” U.S. News & World Report, May 2, 2012.
75 “The Kennedy Family Romance”: Michael Trask, “The Kennedy Family Romance,” in The Cambridge Companion to John F. Kennedy, ed. Andrew Hoberek (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 211.
75 formulaic, episodic sitcoms: Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
75 “General Motors of the housing”: Colin Marshall, “Levittown, the Prototypical American Suburb,” Guardian, April 28, 2015.
75 The family business operated vertically: David Schuyler, “Reflections on Levittown at Fifty,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 70, no. 1 (2003): 101–9.
76 “mass consumption was not”: Lizabeth Cohen, “A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America,” Journal of Consumer Research 31 (June 2004): 236.
76 an act of resistance: Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
76 The idea was: May, interview by author, Aug. 27, 2023.
76 “Everything I’m not”: Kanye West, Everything I Am (Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam, 2007).
76 “Americans purchased 21.4 million cars”: May, Homeward Bound, 158.
77 “The inner-directed person”: David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), 24.
78 “simulacrum of conversational give and take”: Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl, “Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance,” Psychiatry 19, no. 3 (1956): 215.
78 “grave blow to national self-esteem”: Lynn Spigel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 111.
79 In 1958, Kennedy appeared: At Home with the Kennedys, Oct. 28, 1958.
79 “The spectacular fact”: Horton and Wohl, “Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction,” 216.
79 “Whereas film requires audiences”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 165.
79 “early TV was limited”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 165.
80 JFK was “created”: David M. Lubin, Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
80 “Joe hopes to see”: “A Debut into a Burgeoning Family,” Life, April 21, 1958.
80 Subsequent Life coverage: “Strategic Warpath in Wisconsin,” Life, March 28, 1960.
81 “I don’t think this should be”: “Strategic Warpath in Wisconsin.”
81 “Jack is the greatest attraction”: Lubin, Shooting Kennedy, 6.
81 “Far more interest”: Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, 50th Anniversary Edition (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), 41.
82 “Jackie functioned as a movie star”: Wayne Koestenbaum, Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon (New York: Picador, 2009), 66.
82 “She . . . recognized that bourgeois sold”: Trask, “Kennedy Family Romance,” 214.
83 “Since the 35th president”: Alistair Cooke, “The Public Face of John F. Kennedy,” Show, April 1963.
83 “whose home economics”: Trask, “Kennedy Family Romance,” 215.
83 “The rich man smokes”: Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 292.
83 described by Jackie as “destitute”: At Home with the Kennedys, Oct. 28, 1958.
84 “American history is sometimes a dull subject”: At Home with the Kennedys, Oct. 28, 1958.
84 sixty-five million viewers: “John F. Kennedy and the Press,” JFK Library.
84 “There were only three”: Pierre Salinger, Oral History Interview, interview by Theodore White, Aug. 10, 1965, JFK Library.
85 “It strikes me”: Cohen, email interview by author, Aug. 28, 2023.
85 In 2020, Kimye sat down: “Kim and Kanye Quiz Each Other on Home Design, Family, and Life,” Architectural Digest, Feb. 3, 2020, YouTube.
86 One video from 2019: “73 Questions with Kim Kardashian West (Ft. Kanye West),” Vogue, April 11, 2019, YouTube.
87 “I don’t love how minimal”: @ikariiprince, “I don’t love how minimal and empty the house feels but when you see the drawings and little mementos it’s so heartwarming,” Inside Kim Kardashian’s Home Filled with Wonderful Objects, Feb. 18, 2022.
87 “The President’s determination”: Cooke, “Public Face of John F. Kennedy.”
88 “Galella had taken”: Andrew Goldman, “The Untold Story Behind the Most Famous Photo of Jackie Kennedy,” Town & Country, May 10, 2020.
89 In 2014, it would be suggested: Christopher Andersen, The Good Son: JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved (New York: Gallery Books, 2014).
89 “Julia Fox Gave a Tour”: Mychal Thompson, “Julia Fox Gave a Tour of Her ‘Underwhelming Apartment,’ and It’s Screaming Most Relatable Celebrity of the Year,” BuzzFeed, Jan. 25, 2023.
90 “I don’t like excessive displays”: Mary K. Jacob, “Julia Fox Heading to Harlem with Purchase of $2.9M Townhouse,” New York Post, May 2, 2023.
90 “outsider candidates”: Jason Turcotte, Comedy, Cameos, and Campaign Communication: Leveraging Entertainment Media to Win Elections and Advance Policy (New York: Routledge, 2024), 19.
91 “Almost exactly one week after testifying”: M. J. Corey, “How Kim Kardashian’s Robbery Trial Came and Went,” New Yorker, May 24, 2025.
91 “as lawyers in tiny suits”: Corey, “How Kim Kardashian’s Robbery Trial Came and Went.”
92 “You know the football player”: Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, and Khloé Kardashian, Kardashian Konfidential (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 28.
92 “provided the medium”: Leola Johnson and David Roediger, “ ‘Hertz, Don’t It?’: Becoming Colorless and Staying Black in the Crossover of O. J. Simpson,” in Birth of a Nation’hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O. J. Simpson Case, ed. Toni Morrison and Claudia Brodsky Lacour (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), 223.
92 “our dad’s best friend”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 29.
93 “Using large, blood-red type”: Ann duCille, “The Unbearable Darkness of Being: ‘Fresh’ Thoughts on Race, Sex, and the Simpsons,” in Morrison and Lacour, Birth of a Nation’hood, 294.
93 “alarm about the family”: George Lipsitz, “The Greatest Story Ever Told: Marketing and the O. J. Simpson Trial,” in Morrison and Lacour, Birth of a Nation’hood, 11.
93 “If one were to ban”: Peter Brooks, Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative (New York: New York Review Books, 2022), 130.
93 “One of our dad’s best traits”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 29.
93 “100 percent convinced that O.J.”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 29.
94 “the court had installed”: Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle (London: Routledge, 2010), 109.
95 “famous car chase”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 29.
95 “presented 631 hours”: Lipsitz, “Greatest Story Ever Told,” 11.
95 “over thirty civil wars”: Kellner, Media Spectacle, 100.
95 “It was very difficult”: “Kris Jenner,” The Ellen DeGeneres Show, CBS, March 1, 2016.
96 “Yes, Willie Horton”: Patricia J. Williams, “American Kabuki,” in Morrison and Lacour, Birth of a Nation’hood, 276.
97 “Often for black people”: “The O.J. Verdict,” Frontline, PBS, Oct. 4, 2005.
97 “The expensive boxes above”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 66.
97 “this segregation within theaters”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 67.
98 On May 8, the tensions: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 68.
98 “Conflicts about celebrities”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 65.
98 “the decline of community”: Kellner, Media Spectacle, 112.
99 “So the notion of something”: Stuart Hall, “Representation and the Media,” 1997.
99 “If only West and Swift”: Yolanda Sangweni, “The Racial Politics of Kanye vs. Taylor,” Essence, Oct. 29, 2020.
100 “The life I have lived”: Zoe Williams, “The Saturday Interview: Stuart Hall,” Guardian, Feb. 11, 2012.
100 John Harwood asked: “Obama Calls Kanye a ‘Jackass,’ ” TMZ, Oct. 4, 2009.
100 Ray J later revealed: Ray-J (@rayj), Instagram live, Sept. 10, 2022.
101 $1.4 million in its first six weeks: “Kim and Ray Got Email Touting Sales Numbers,” TMZ, Sept. 13, 2022.
102 “Paris calls me and she’s like”: Oli Coleman, “The Kim Kardashian Sex Tape: An Oral History,” Page Six, March 27, 2017.
102 “Ray was . . . trying to figure out”: Coleman, “Kim Kardashian Sex Tape.”
102 “the memory of the trial”: Manuel Harpin, “There Is No Sexual Relation,” in Kardashians: A Critical Anthology, ed. Meredith Jones, Kath Burton, and Donna Lee Brien (London: Routledge, 2024).
102 “If that had been me”: Saira Khan, “Kim Kardashian and Co. Have Given Power to Women and Shown Them How to Feel Good,” Mirror, Sept. 12, 2020.
103 “Decoding within the negotiated version”: Stuart Hall, “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse,” in CCCS Selected Working Papers, vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 2007).
103 “I could literally be”: “George Lopez Interview with the Kardashians,” CNN, Aug. 20, 2010.
104 “I was asked to just give my response”: bell hooks: Cultural Criticism and Transformation (Media Education Foundation, 1997).
105 “All that once was”: Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994), 1.
105 “being into having and having into merely appearing”: Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 16.
106 “When the real world changes”: Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Greg Adargo (Detroit: Black & Red Books, 1974), thesis 18.
106 “The key pieces of material evidence”: Lipsitz, “Greatest Story Ever Told,” 14.
107 “What if I was asleep”: “Burn Them All to the F*cking Ground,” The Kardashians, April 14, 2022.
107 was promptly sued: Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates, No. 345 F. Supp. 108 (N.D. Cal 1972).
108 “transfixed by the packaging”: Kellner, Media Spectacle, 16.
108 “contending groups”: Kellner, Media Spectacle, 114.
108 “fragment into smaller”: Kellner, Media Spectacle, 112.
108 “instruction concerning”: Kellner, Media Spectacle, 102.
108 “for groups—the working class”: Richard Dyer, Stars (London: BFI Publishing, 1998), 162.
109 “One source of public dissatisfaction”: Lipsitz, “Greatest Story Ever Told,” 16.
110 The trial’s judge, Lance Ito: Lipsitz, “Greatest Story Ever Told,” 10.
110 an O.J.-themed cruise: Kellner, Media Spectacle, 103.
110 willing to shell out: Pamela Warrick, “O.J.: The Cruise,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 13, 1995.
110 “Industry experts confided”: Lipsitz, “Greatest Story Ever Told.”
110 “not only have we lost Nicole”: “Interview,” Inside Edition, 1994.
111 7.7 million viewers: Mikey O’Connell, “TV Ratings: ‘The People v. O. J. Simpson’ Audience Rises for Finale,” Hollywood Reporter, April 6, 2016.
111 “Interns and younger staff”: @Fritschner, “Interns and younger staff discussing OJ Simpson say they barely know who he was but they know one of his lawyers was a Kardashian,” X, April 11, 2024.
111 “It’s because of [my father]”: “Kim Kardashian West/Halsey,” Saturday Night Live, Oct. 9, 2021.
112 “some legal stuff”: Charlamagne tha God, “Donkey,” The Breakfast Club, June 11, 2024.
113 “as famous as Persil”: Victoria Beckham, Learning to Fly: The Autobiography (London: M. Joseph, 2001), 123.
114 “There is a big difference”: “Spice Girls the ‘anti-Christ’ Says Record Legend,” Irish Independent, Nov. 5, 1997.
114 “If I had kids”: David Sinclair, “Q&A: Thom Yorke Talks Dreams, Creative People, Fitting Format,” Rolling Stone (blog), Dec. 25, 1997.
114 “Look at [the Kardashians]”: John Naughton, “Daniel Craig: A Very Secret Agent,” British GQ, Nov. 2011.
114 In 2012 the actor Jon Hamm: Aaron Couch, “Jon Hamm Says for Kim Kardashian, Idiocy a ‘Valuable Commodity,’ ” Hollywood Reporter, March 10, 2012.
114 “four will invariably split up”: David Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited: How the Spice Girls Reinvented Pop (London: Omnibus Press, 2009), 11.
115 “There are a lot of boy groups”: Raw Spice (Zig Zag Productions, 2001).
115 “It’s almost as if they went out”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 22.
116 “The established girl group”: Jacqueline C. Warwick, Girl Groups, Girl Culture (New York: Routledge, 2007), 45.
116 “The one thing I always was certain of”: “The Final Curtain Part 1,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, June 17, 2021.
116 “Collectively, we’ve got something”: Hayley Campbell and Kathy Acker, “ ‘The World Is Infested with Evil!’: When Kathy Acker Met the Spice Girls,” Guardian, Feb. 26, 2018.
117 “You cannot manufacture”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 37.
117 “Those girls worked harder”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 108.
117 “It’s the meeting that changed”: Yvonne Villareal, “ ‘The Meeting That Changed the World’: Inside the First Days of the Kardashian Empire,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2021.
117 “Together it was easy”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 73.
117 “I like these girls”: Campbell and Acker, “ ‘World Is Infested with Evil!’ ”
118 “I suppose it’s that old school management”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 25.
118 “the matching dresses”: Warwick, Girl Groups, Girl Culture, 77.
118 “If there is little to distinguish”: Cyrus quoted in Warwick, Girl Groups, Girl Culture, 79.
119 Kim even admitted: “Kim Kardashian West,” My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, Oct. 21, 2020.
119 “I can attribute great moments”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 54.
119 “Geri and the two Mels”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 39.
120 “When we used to rock up”: Amelia White, “Melanie C Imagines How the Spice Girls Would Fare in 2020,” Love, April 1, 2020.
120 “It was a sort of comic cynicism”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 119.
121 “Girl group songs are clearly”: Warwick, Girl Groups, Girl Culture, 95.
121 “examples of percussive sounds”: Warwick, Girl Groups, Girl Culture, 96.
121 “The word archetype”: Adriana Braga, “Mind as Medium: Jung, McLuhan, and the Archetype,” Philosophies 1, no. 3 (2016): 221.
122 “unconscious images”: C. G. Jung, “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious,” in Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 9 (Part 1) (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), 43.
122 “deeper layer”: Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious,” in Collected Works, 3.
122 “classical era”: Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 134.
123 “Which ‘Grease’ Pink Lady Are You?”: Dino Grandoni, “The Secret Behind BuzzFeed’s Quizzes,” HuffPost, Feb. 20, 2014.
123 “strongly aligned with a single archetype”: Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson, The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), 30.
123 “careful selection and maintenance”: David Chapin, “Gaining Differentiation (and Pricing Power) Through the Use of Archetypes in Life Science Marketing,” Marketing of Science, 2024.
124 something Kris Jenner also does: “Oh Baby!,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, July 3, 2016.
124 “deranged postmodern masterpiece”: Sirin Kale, “How the ‘Spice World’ Movie Became a Deranged, Postmodern Masterpiece,” Vice, Jan. 23, 2018.
124 “Each of us has a particular personality”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 102.
124 In 2016, Kim announced: Keely Lockhart, “Kim Kardashian: ‘I’m Not a Feminist or a Free-the-Nipple Type of Girl,’ ” Telegraph, Aug. 6, 2016.
125 “relationship kind of girl”: The Kardashians Special, ABC, April 2, 2022.
125 “lights-off kind of girl”: “Everything Is My Fault!,” The Kardashians, June 8, 2023.
125 “idea for . . . a team-building activity”: “Cattle Drive Me Crazy,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Dec. 15, 2019.
125 “retrieval systems”: Marshall McLuhan, From Cliché to Archetype (New York: Viking Press, 1970), 99.
126 “Decades after the Victorian Novel”: Hugh Kenner, “From Cliché to Archetype,” New York Times, Dec. 13, 1970.
126 “presentational media culture”: P. David Marshall, The Celebrity Persona Pandemic (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), chap. 7.
126 “similar efforts have been employed”: Marshall, Celebrity Persona Pandemic, chap. 7.
127 “The Billboard list”: Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction (New York: Penguin Books, 2018), 81.
128 “Rankings were like steroids for hits”: Thompson, Hit Makers, 168.
128 “There was apparently no product”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 112.
129 “Well,” Kris answered: “Havana Good Night,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Aug. 7, 2016.
129 “By June 1997”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 116.
129 “Spice Girls Back Sceptics”: Simon Sebag Montefiore, “Spice Girls Back Sceptics on Europe,” Spectator, Dec. 14, 1996.
129 The issue was The Spectator’s best selling: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 97.
130 “almost universal tendency”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 105.
130 “mix of both”: Bari Weiss, “My Conversation with Kim Kardashian,” Free Press, Dec. 16, 2021.
130 “gender disparities in the workplace”: Leigh Stein, “The End of the Girlboss Is Here,” GEN, June 22, 2020, www.gen.medium.com.
131 “developed in part as a reaction”: Jenny Stevens, “How the Spice Girls Ripped ‘Girl Power’ from Its Radical Roots,” Vice, Nov. 4, 2016.
132 “nobody goes to spoken word”: The Punk Singer (A Bird in the Hand Productions, BFI, 2014).
132 “In the late 1980s, all-female subcultures”: Nyala Ali, “From Riot Grrrl to Girls Rock Camp: Gendered Spaces, Musicianship, and the Culture of Girl Making,” Networking Knowledge 5, no. 1 (2012): 143.
132 “We came up with ‘power’ ”: Stevens, “How the Spice Girls Ripped ‘Girl Power’ from Its Radical Roots.”
132 “dressed like a pastiche”: Stevens, “How the Spice Girls Ripped ‘Girl Power’ from Its Radical Roots.”
133 “ensorcelled”: “20 Questions for Courtney Love, the Queen of Grunge,” Interview, June 6, 2019.
133 “The rise and fall of the girlboss”: Stein, “End of the Girlboss Is Here.”
133 A 2024 study by Deloitte: “2024 Gen Z and Millennial Survey: Living and Working with Purpose in a Transforming World” (Deloitte, 2024).
134 blockbuster grossed $162 million: Sara Fischer, “ ‘Barbie’ Makes History with $162 Million Blockbuster Weekend Debut,” Axios, July 24, 2023.
134 “different hotel”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 142.
135 “The pop guru”: “Spice Girls Sack Their Manager,” Herald, Nov. 8, 1997.
135 “a mixture of charm”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 98.
135 “$1.5 million exclusive”: “Kim Kardashian–Kris Humphries Wedding Photos Sell for $1.5 Million,” Hollywood Reporter, Aug. 19, 2011.
135 “The thing about the media”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 153.
136 “There was some big bust-up”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 172.
137 A Daily Mail headline: Laura Fox, “Kourtney Kardashian’s Family ‘Fears She Will QUIT Their Reality Show,’ ” Daily Mail Online, July 8, 2023.
137 “I think it may well have”: Sinclair, Spice Girls Revisited, 182.
138 “bright pop of hot pink”: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, “Sex and the City” and Us (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 22.
138 “Maybe we can be each other’s soulmates”: “The Agony and the Ex-Tacy,” Sex and the City, June 3, 2001.
138 “hypocrite”: Emma Stefansky, “Kim Cattrall Rejects ‘Cruel Hypocrite’ Sarah Jessica Parker’s Condolences,” Vanity Fair, Feb. 10, 2018.
139 “Paris really started that movement”: This Is Paris (YouTube, 2020).
139 “Those who stand near the higher”: Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (New York: Vanguard Press, 1928), 77.
140 “ebony and ivory”: Laura Brown, “The Kim Kardashian Interview: Cleopatra with a ‘K,’ ” Harper’s Bazaar, Feb. 9, 2011.
141 “in the first half of 2005”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 237.
141 “The media supplied”: Neal Gabler, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (New York: Knopf, 1998), 156.
142 after a cartoon character: Gabler, Life the Movie, 66.
142 “present images of beauty”: Gabler, Life the Movie, 16.
142 “pictures . . . as symbols”: Gabler, Life the Movie, 72.
143 “play within a play”: Zsa Zsa Gabor and Gerold Frank, Zsa Zsa Gabor: My Story (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1960), 177.
143 A 2004 study: Steven Reiss and James Wiltz, “Why People Watch Reality TV,” Media Psychology 6, no. 4 (2004): 363–78.
143 “demonstrate[d] their superiority”: Gabler, Life the Movie, 69.
144 “old money” is applicable: W. Lloyd Warner, Social Class in America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960).
144 “there is a natural law”: Estate of Conrad Nicholson Hilton (Court of Appeal, Second District, Division 7, California, March 28, 1988).
145 “conspicuous consumption”: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 65.
145 “the way by which the wealthy”: Dyer, Stars, 38.
145 familiarity with “legitimate culture”: Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 2.
145 “While Hilton is appropriately young”: Hannah Elliott, “Bentley’s Paris Hilton Problem,” Forbes, Oct. 19, 2011.
146 “born into the right family”: Paris Hilton, Confessions of an Heiress (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 10.
146 “acquisition of a reputation”: Bourdieu, Distinction, 291.
147 “The show maintains”: Cassidy George, “ ‘The Simple Life’ Was an Accidentally Brilliant Reflection on America’s Political Divide,” i-D, Nov. 27, 2018.
147 50 percent of the country: Jeffrey B. Wenger and Melanie A. Zaber, “Who Is Middle Class?,” RAND Corporation, Feb. 2021.
147 “baking pies”: Reuters, “Paris Hilton Outdraws Bush,” New York Times, Dec. 19, 2003.
148 “This is the most reckless war”: Edward Said, “The Academy of Lagado,” London Review of Books, April 17, 2003.
148 “It’s called Hollywood disease”: “Kim & Kourtney Kardashian,” The Tyra Banks Show, CW, Sept. 23, 2008.
149 “hospitalizations with a principal diagnosis”: Yafu Zhao and William Encinosa, “An Update on Hospitalizations for Eating Disorders, 1999 to 2009,” HCUP Statistical Brief #120 (Rockville, Md.: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2011).
149 “I had over a hundred guys”: This Is Paris, 23:50.
149 “I knew exactly where they were”: “The Final Curtain Part 1,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, June 17, 2021.
150 “real, noncompetitive female friendship”: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, “Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’: How ‘Girl Power’ Reinvigorated Mainstream Feminism in the ’90s,” Billboard, July 15, 2016.
150 “It was like being electronically raped”: This Is Paris.
150 “firecrotch”: “Brandon Davis and Paris—the Incredible Hatred Toward Lindsay,” TMZ, May 18, 2006.
150 “Launched in 2004”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 242.
151 “She was forever using”: “Paris ‘Racist Scandal’ Explodes,” National Enquirer, Oct. 15, 2004.
151 Jezebel received a video: Rich Juzwiak, “The Revision of Paris Hilton’s Story Is Missing Something: Her History with the N-Word,” Jezebel, Sept. 21, 2020.
151 Later, BuzzFeed compiled: Stephanie Soteriou, “Paris Hilton’s Seriously Problematic History of Racist & Anti-Gay Comments Has Resurfaced Online,” BuzzFeed News, Jan. 30, 2023.
152 “2016, with so many more readers”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 237.
152 “I would not want that”: Peggy Truong, “13 Hilarious Things Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton Have Said About Each Other,” Elle, June 29, 2016.
152 “The way to become famous”: Neal Gabler, Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity (New York: Vintage, 1995).
153 “more economic in nature”: L. Jon Wertheim and Sam Sommers, This Is Your Brain on Sports (New York: Crown Archetype, 2016), 54.
154 “Results indicated more rooting”: Wertheim and Sommers, This Is Your Brain on Sports, 46.
154 A 2010 study: Anat Keinan, Jill Avery, and Neeru Paharia, “Capitalizing on the Underdog Effect,” Harvard Business Review, Nov. 2010.
155 “blue collar to white collar”: Meredith Jones, “Don’t Forget to Say Your Prayers,” Beauty Chronicles, Aug. 18, 2023.
155 In 2016, The New York Times found: Josh Katz, “ ‘Duck Dynasty’ vs. ‘Modern Family’: 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide,” New York Times, Dec. 27, 2016.
156 “It’s what she deserves”: “Kardashian Family Vacation,” May 4, 2008.
156 “perfect commercial for our products”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 214.
156 “That . . . bothered me”: Yvonne Villareal, “ ‘The Meeting That Changed the World’: Inside the First Days of the Kardashian Empire,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2021.
156 “glamour labor”: Elizabeth Wissinger, “Inspired by Kim Kardashian, a Feverish Legion of Followers Struggle to Achieve Online Fame,” Conversation, March 14, 2016.
156 “because, we suspect, the triumph”: Keinan, Avery, and Paharia, “Capitalizing on the Underdog Effect.”
157 Taylor “totally knew”: Caity Weaver, “Kim Kardashian West Has a Few Things to Get Off Her Chest,” GQ, June 16, 2016.
158 “I will not stop”: This Is Paris.

Part II

Arrival (2007–2013)

161 “the lack of parent/children boundaries”: Amanda Scheiner McClain, Keeping Up the Kardashian Brand (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2013), 33.
161 “blur[s] boundaries that are distinct”: McClain, Keeping Up the Kardashian Brand, 38–39.
162 “produced comedies”: Jeremy G. Butler, The Sitcom (New York: Routledge, 2020), 128.
162 “slipping lard”: Roxana Hadadi, “Real Dumb: ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians,’ ” Washington Post, Oct. 8, 2008.
162 “Girls . . . it is possible to make it”: “Witherspoon Slams Sex Tape–Making Stars,” TODAY.com, June 6, 2011.
162 “This family that’s famous”: Kevin N. Hume, “Humor Me: Fame’s Disgusting Reality,” Lake County Record-Bee, Nov. 1, 2011, www.record-bee.com/.
163 “grotesque sexuality”: Butler, Sitcom, 128.
163 “Frankly, as an executive”: Villareal, “ ‘Meeting That Changed the World.’ ”
164 “eBay for homes”: Thompson, Hit Makers, 61.
164 “materialistic and self-absorbed”: William Yardley, “Pat Loud, Reality Show Matriarch of ‘An American Family,’ Dies at 94,” New York Times, Jan. 11, 2021.
164 “We’ve gone to the moon”: Cinema Verite (HBO Films, Pariah, 2011).
165 “We’re filming our tenth season”: Kim Kardashian, interview by Kara Swisher, Re/code’s Code Mobile, Oct. 2014.
165 the duo rebranded themselves: Coyne S. Sanders and Tom Gilbert, Desilu: The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (New York: Dey Street Books, 2011), 28.
165 “higher Nielsen rating”: “Radio: Lucy’s $8,000,000,” Time, March 2, 1953.
166 “confronted the question of fame”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 170.
166 support for interracial marriages: Justin McCarthy, “U.S. Approval of Interracial Marriage at New High of 94%,” Gallup, Sept. 10, 2021.
166 “from the ideal levelheaded husband”: Jenna Shaffer, “A Not-So-Nuclear Family: I Love Lucy in the Midst of the Suburban Revolution” (undergraduate thesis, University of Redlands, 2009), 44–45.
167 “If you’re black”: Chris Rock: Selective Outrage (Netflix, 2023).
167 “the only KKK”: Evelyn Diaz, “Khloe Kardashian Slammed for Making KKK Joke,” BET, Nov. 12, 2014.
167 “What’s up with y’all”: Yolanda Young, “What Black Women Could Learn from the Kardashians,” HuffPost, April 20, 2010.
167 “The Kardashian Phenomenon”: Harriet Ryan and Adam Tschorn, “The Kardashian Phenomenon,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 2010.
167 “funny, friendly, and admittedly not perfect”: Dodai Stewart, “Race, Sexuality & the Kardashian ‘Phenomenon,’ ” Jezebel, Feb. 19, 2010.
168 “the number of white and black”: Kim Parker et al., “Multiracial in America,” Pew Research Center, June 11, 2015, 6.
168 The Kar-Jenners themselves: McClain, Keeping Up the Kardashian Brand.
168 “You wouldn’t know it”: “Obama Takes His Hat Off to JFK in Presidential Race,” Chicago Tribune, Feb. 12, 2007.
168 A 2009 survey: Michael Tesler, “The Spillover of Racialization into Health Care,” American Journal of Political Science 56, no. 3 (2012): 690.
169 “storylines that generated”: Emily Guskin, Mahvish Sahid Khan, and Amy Mitchell, “Biggest Storylines with African American Angles,” Pew Research Center, July 26, 2010.
169 “the year of Girls Gone Wild”: “Celebrity Train Wrecks of 2007,” CBS News, Dec. 31, 2007.
169 “came up with the idea”: Scaachi Koul, “Inside the Stunning Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild,” HuffPost, May 18, 2023.
169 “a fantasy world dreamed up”: Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 17.
170 “with the highest-grade amateur”: Vicki Mayer, “Soft-Core in TV Time,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 22, no. 4 (2005): 304.
170 $20 million in its first two years: Abigail Adams, “Girls Gone Wild Victims, Enemies, and Employees Speak Out in Trailer for New Docuseries,” People.com, Nov. 20, 2024.
170 sold 4.5 million videos and DVDs: Michael Schneider, “ ‘Wild’ Informercial Struts Its Stuff,” Variety, Dec. 8, 2002.
170 “slew of charges”: Koul, “Inside the Stunning Rise and Fall of Girls Gone Wild.”
170 “You know we would never do anything”: “Brody in the House,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Oct. 28, 2007.
171 “a media controversy”: Michael D. E. Goodyear and Linda Cusick, “Protection of Sex Workers,” BMJ: British Medical Journal 334, no. 7584 (2007): 52.
171 “The relationship between class-based ethical ideals”: Elizabeth Bernstein, Temporarily Yours (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 83.
172 “young army veteran in Chicago”: Lubin, Shooting Kennedy, 50.
173 “negotiate with a calendar manufacturer”: Lubin, Shooting Kennedy, 51.
173 “creat[ing] a nationwide stag party”: Lubin, Shooting Kennedy, 51.
173 “Hefner received his training”: Lubin, Shooting Kennedy, 51.
174 The fourth episode of KUWTK’s first season: “Birthday Suit,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Nov. 4, 2007.
175 “unusual word sequences”: Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil et al., “You Had Me at Hello: How Phrasing Affects Memorability,” arXiv, April 30, 2012.
176 the New York Post announced: Keith J. Kelly, “Playboy in Market for a Sugar Daddy with $300M,” New York Post, May 22, 2009.
176 “In the most recent quarter”: Kelly, “Playboy in Market for a Sugar Daddy with $300M.”
176 “In the last three decades”: “When Sex Doesn’t Sell, Can Geriatric Playboy Stay Alive?,” ABC News, May 12, 2009.
177 “Their overhead is astronomical”: “When Sex Doesn’t Sell, Can Geriatric Playboy Stay Alive?”
177 “a direct-to-camera”: Noel Murray, “Please Kill the Reality TV ‘Confessional,’ ” A.V. Club, March 23, 2015.
178 “Reality-TV writer Brian Moylan”: Louis Staples, “The Reality-TV Confessional Shaped Our Digital Lives,” Cut, Oct. 18, 2022.
178 “a verbal act through which”: Michel Foucault, Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling: The Function of Avowal in Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 4.
178 “judicial and penal institutions”: Foucault, Wrong-Doing, Truth-Telling, 23.
179 a “ ‘transdenominational doctrine’ ”: Meredith Jones, “The Kardashians: Citizens of Surplus,” Citizenship Studies 28, no. 1 (2024): 101.
179 “many people describe”: Jones, “Kardashians: Citizens of Surplus,” 105.
179 “Even a family as crazy as ours”: Christine Thomasos, “Kris Jenner Talks How Her Religion Helped Her Get Past Kim Kardashian’s Adult Tape,” Christian Post, Nov. 8, 2013.
179 “I hardly drink”: “The Kardashians,” Oprah’s Next Chapter, June 24, 2012.
180 “best described as the big box variety”: Richard S. Vosko, “Architecture for Worship: Re-Thinking Sacred Spaces in the Contemporary United States of America,” in Colloquium: Music, Worship, Arts, vol. 1 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Institute of Sacred Music, 2004).
180 “Whatever it is, I give 10 percent away”: “Episode #1.9,” Piers Morgan Live, Jan. 27, 2011.
180 In 2018, Kim told Vogue: Celia Ellenberg, “Kim Kardashian West Was Once a Catholic School Student Who Couldn’t Wear Makeup—Except on the Weekends,” Vogue, May 17, 2018.
181 “I just want to know”: “It Feels Good to Be Home,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Sept. 27, 2015.
181 World Wrestling Entertainment: “Who We Are,” WWE, accessed March 12, 2025, corporate.wwe.com/about/who-we-are.
181 In 2006, WWE’s chairman: “Mr. McMahon & Shane McMahon Def. Shawn Michaels & ‘God,’ ” WWE, 2006.
181 “the booming industry of professional wrestler”: Dan Mathewson, “Sacred Spinebusters, Transcendent Toe Holds, Part Two: The Confluence of Religion and Professional Wrestling,” Sacred Matters, 2014.
182 “the unconscious desires, fears and tensions”: Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 237.
182 The neuropsychology of storytelling: Paul J. Zak, “Why Inspiring Stories Make Us React: The Neuroscience of Narrative,” Cerebrum: The Dana Forum on Brain Science, Feb. 2, 2015.
182 In March 2008: “Every WWE Pay-Per-View Buyrate,” WrestleTalk, Aug. 31, 2020, wrestletalk.com/stats.
182 $24 million in revenue: Gary Davis, “WWE® Reports 2008 First Quarter Results,” May 6, 2008, https://corporate.wwe.com/f/docs/press-releases/11062008_720.pdf.
182 “battle of the billionaires”: Mike Householder, “Donald Trump Shaves Vince McMahon at WWE Wrestlemania 23,” Times Herald-Record, April 2, 2007.
182 While explaining the structure: “Kim Kardashian Appears at WrestleMania 24,” WWE, accessed March 12, 2025, YouTube.
183 “It no longer matters”: Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991), 16.
183 “the ancient myths of public Suffering”: Barthes, Mythologies, 19.
183 “A wrestler . . . never disappoints”: Barthes, Mythologies, 22.
184 “as on the stage in antiquity”: Barthes, Mythologies, 14.
184 “Don’t ever come at me like that”: “Fights, Friendships, and Fashion Week Pt. 1,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, March 26, 2020.
185 “least exciting to look at”: “Photo Shoot Dispute,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Aug. 5, 2018.
185 “We all have different priorities”: Kourtney Kardashian (@kourtneykardash), Twitter, Aug. 6, 2018.
185 “And mine is not?”: Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian), Twitter, Aug. 6, 2018.
185 “The Kardashian Sisters Are Fighting”: Christopher Rosa, “The Kardashian Sisters Are Fighting on Twitter, and People Think Kris Staged It,” Glamour, Aug. 6, 2018.
187 “benefits financially from the genuine violence”: Brian Jansen, “ ‘It’s Still Real to Me’: Contemporary Professional Wrestling, Neo-Liberalism, and the Problems of Performed/Real Violence,” Canadian Review of American Studies 50, no. 2 (2020): 313.
187 “to fail in attempting a scripted move”: “Botch (Professional Wrestling),” in Wikipedia, Sept. 23, 2024.
187 “reported in 2017 to be the single largest donor”: Jansen, “ ‘It’s Still Real to Me,’ ” 314.
187 “Dont ever get it twisted”: Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian), Twitter, Aug. 6, 2018.
187 the Kardashians opened their first retail store: “Kardashians at Kardashian Khaos Grand Opening,” Las Vegas Review Journal, Dec. 15, 2011.
187 In 2008, Kim performed: “Pussycat Vision,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, March 29, 2009.
187 a high-drama KUWTK episode: “Blame It on the Alcohol,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Feb. 21, 2010.
188 Studies proved that during this era: Giovanni Pino et al., “Product Touch in the Real and Digital World: How Do Consumers React?,” Journal of Business Research 112 (May 2020): 492–501.
188 Out of thirty-two Yelp reviews: “Kardashian Khaos—Las Vegas, NV,” Yelp, accessed March 25, 2025.
188 the philosopher Jean Baudrillard: Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).
189 the Wachowski sisters cited: The Matrix (Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures, Groucho Film Partnership, 1999).
189 instead praised The Truman Show: Lancelin Aude and Jean Baudrillard, “The Matrix Decoded: Le Nouvel Observateur Interview with Jean Baudrillard,” trans. Gary Genosko and Adam Bryx, International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 1, no. 2 (2004), baudrillardstudies.ubishops.ca.
189 “no longer a question of imitation”: Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 2.
189 “keep[s] it real for the family”: “73 Questions with Kim Kardashian West (Ft. Kanye West).”
189 “network of artificial signs”: Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 20.
190 The option to take a real selfie: “Kim Kardashian Unveiled,” Madame Tussauds London, July 9, 2015, www.madametussauds.com/london/.
190 “is presented as imaginary”: Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 12–13.
190 “You have, more or less”: Stefan Al, interview by MJ Corey, “Theory and Content-Creating in Las Vegas: Which Iconic City Is the Kardashian Family? (Improved),” Oct. 1, 2021, YouTube.
191 “vague historical or poetic”: Berger, Ways of Seeing, 140.
192 “In jargon, it’s called intermittent variable ratio”: Natasha Dow Schüll, interview by MJ Corey, “Theory and Content-Creating in Las Vegas: Which Iconic City Is the Kardashian Family? (Improved),” Oct. 1, 2021, YouTube.
192 the time when the sad-girl pop star: Hannah Malach, “Lana Del Rey Earns Skims $13.7 Million in Media Exposure Following Valentine’s Day Collection Campaign Release,” WWD, Jan. 25, 2024.
193 As Lawrence E. Mintz put it: Lawrence E. Mintz, “Las Vegas,” in American Icons: An Encyclopedia of the People, Places, and Things That Have Shaped Our Culture, ed. Dennis R. Hall and Susan Grove Hall (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006).
193 “It was based on the image of the city”: Stefan Johannes Al, “The Strip: Las Vegas and the Symbolic Destruction of Spectacle” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2010), 155.
193 “the first themed megaresort”: Al, “Strip,” 123.
193 “What is specific about this design method”: Al, “Strip,” 135.
194 “Delivering Baby Mason”: “Delivering Baby Mason,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Feb. 28, 2010.
194 I Love Lucy is credited with: Daniel S. Levy, “How ‘I Love Lucy’ Changed How America Saw Motherhood,” Time, May 8, 2021.
194 Ball even scheduled her C-section: Ken Tucker, “I Love Lucy: The Publicity Stunt to Deliver Lucille Ball’s Real-Life and TV Son on the Same 1953 Evening,” EW.com, Jan. 21, 1994.
195 “great TV, or too much for me”: “Kardashian Pulls Out Own Baby,” CNN, 2012.
195 “She did not make a sound”: altitudious, “Kourtney Giving Birth to Mason,” r/KUWTK, Reddit, Feb. 7, 2021, www.reddit.com/r/KUWTK/.
195 “sentiment of invisible omnipresence”: Bentham quoted in Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain, Michel Foucault (London: Macmillan Education, 1984).
195 He called the panopticon: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 201, 202.
195 “One thing about which fish”: Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, War and Peace in the Global Village (New York: Bantam Books, 2001), 175.
196 “It’s ironic that Truman was running”: Julie Miller, “Twenty Years Later, Everything Is The Truman Show,” Vanity Fair, June 5, 2018.
197 “human experience . . . into behavioral data”: Noah Kulwin, “Shoshana Zuboff Talks Surveillance Capitalism’s Threat to Democracy,” New York, Feb. 24, 2019.
198 “I do wish that my father and Mason”: Kourtney Kardashian, “Kourtney Kardashian’s Blog: Where Mason Gets His Looks!,” People.com, June 8, 2010.
198 During the last season: “Keeping Up with the Kids,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, May 20, 2021.
198 Today, when you stream: “Kim’s Fairytale Wedding: A Kardashian Event—Part 1,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Oct. 9, 2011.
198 “struck deals with several companies”: “Kris Jenner Tried to Get Kim Kardashian to Cancel Wedding to Kris Humphries the Night Before,” Hollywood Reporter, Aug. 16, 2017.
199 New York Times feature titled: Eric Wilson, “Kim Kardashian Inc.,” New York Times, Nov. 18, 2010.
199 “drew 10.5 million viewers”: “ ‘Kim’s Fairytale Wedding’ Sets Ratings Records for E!,” Deadline, Oct. 11, 2011.
200 “proved the power of television”: Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium Is the Massage (New York: Bantam Books, 2001), 125.
200 “Research into collective memory”: Chris Rojek, Celebrity (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), 48.
200 “I know a lot of people”: Wiig quoted in Shanta Cosme, “The Kardashians Get the SNL Treatment in ‘Kim’s Fairy Tale Divorce’ Skit,” Complex, Nov. 7, 2011.
200 Writing in 1962, Boorstin saw America: Daniel J. Boorstin, Image.
200 Image-driven news sensationalism: Boorstin, Image, 4.
201 “preliminary ratings show[ed]”: Mikey O’Connell, “ ‘Kourtney & Kim Take New York’ Hits Ratings Records with Season Premiere,” Hollywood Reporter, Nov. 28, 2011.
201 “a person who is known”: Boorstin, Image, 57.
202 “Of course it was remarkable”: Boorstin quoted in Lubin, Shooting Kennedy, 139.
202 Disney announced to Variety: Elizabeth Wagmeister, “ ‘The Kardashians’ Becomes Hulu’s Most-Watched Premiere in America (EXCLUSIVE),” Variety, April 20, 2022.
202 “We’re paving our way”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 214.
202 “Kim, would you stop taking pictures”: Keeping Up with the Kardashians, “Free Khloé,” March 8, 2009.
203 “The mug shot does not reveal”: Jerry Saltz, “The Art of the Mug Shot,” New York, Aug. 27, 2023.
203 Marilyn Monroe, though no one can confirm: Alex Kasprak, “These Photos Show Marilyn Monroe’s Mugshot?,” Snopes, April 8, 2024.
204 “Orange Is the New Black belongs”: Jessica Grose, “What’s a Nice Blonde Like Me Doing in Prison?,” Slate, April 8, 2010.
204 “big in its reach”: James Poniewozik, “ ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Taught Us What Netflix Was For,” New York Times, July 17, 2019.
204 Jackie Cruz, who’d made a 2009 appearance: Kourtney & Kim Take Miami, 2, “Sex, Drugs, and Consequences,” Aug. 23, 2009.
204 “a vast ensemble, composed of subgroups”: Poniewozik, “ ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Taught Us What Netflix Was For.”
205 Why do people enjoy watching: Shirley A. Jackson and Laurie L. Gordy, Caged Women: Incarceration, Representation, and Media (New York: Routledge, 2018).
205 Kris documented her facelift journey: Keeping Up with the Kardashians, “Kim’s Fairytale Wedding: A Kardashian Event,” Oct. 10, 2011.
205 an X-ray of her butt: Keeping Up with the Kardashians, “The Former Mrs. Jenner,” June 26, 2011.
206 “When you told me”: The Celebrity Apprentice, “Small & Mighty, Down & Dirty,” April 4, 2009, on NBC.
206 “Why don’t we fire Khloe?”: Jason Cherkis and Sam Stein, “Trump Trashed Khloe Kardashian on ‘Apprentice’ Set, Staffers Say,” HuffPost, Oct. 14, 2016.
206 a 131 percent increase: Plastic Surgery Statistics Report 2020, ASPS National Clearinghouse of Plastic Surgery Procedural Statistics (American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2020).
206 Trump has also reappropriated: Cathay Y. N. Smith, “The Criminally Complicated Copyright Questions About Trump’s Mugshot,” Stanford Law Review 76 (March 2024).
206 Trump tweeted out his snarling 2023 mug shot: Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), “DONALDJTRUMP.COM,” X, Aug. 25, 2023.
206 In one day of sales: Alex Isenstadt, “Trump Raised $7.1 Million After Georgia Booking, Mugshot,” Politico, Aug. 26, 2023.
206 hanging his own mug shot: Alana Wise, “A Gold-Framed Trump Mug Shot Is Hanging Just Outside the Oval Office,” NPR, Feb. 20, 2025.
207 “He jokes that he put on”: Allie Gemmill, “Kanye West Didn’t Even Know Kim Kardashian’s Name When They Met,” Teen Vogue, Sept. 25, 2017.
207 “I think my style is just evolving”: “Kardashian Therapy: Part 1,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Aug. 26, 2012.
207 When she interviewed me: “Are the Kardashians America’s Family?,” It’s Been a Minute, NPR, Nov. 4, 2022.
208 The couple was engaged: “A Surprise Engagement: Part 1,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Feb. 9, 2014.
208 “Thanks guys! I had no idea”: Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian), Twitter, Feb. 22, 2010.
208 “I like the feeling of having buttons to press”: Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian), Twitter, Dec. 30, 2009.
208 “It was a big night for Kim”: “Met Gala 2013: Kim Kardashian’s Night on Instagram,” ABC News, May 7, 2013.
208 Know Your Meme: “Kim Kardashian,” Know Your Meme, Aug. 4, 2014, knowyour meme.com.
208 “small cultural units of transmission”: Limor Shifman, Memes in Digital Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014), 9.
209 “agents of globalization”: Shifman, Memes in Digital Culture, 151.
209 “adjusting memes is part of their pleasure”: WPCC Editorial Board, “Viral Culture, Memes in Society and Politics: An Interview with Anastasia Denisova,” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 15, no. 1 (2020).
209 “I think I wore it better!”: “ ‘I Wore It Better!’ Funnyman Robin Williams Weighs in on Kim Kardashian’s Floral Horror by Comparing Her Outfit to Mrs. Doubtfire,” Mail Online, May 8, 2013.
209 In 2019, Kim told Vogue: “Kim Kardashian Breaks Down 21 Looks from 2006 to Now,” Vogue, YouTube, 2019.
209 “superiority theory, endorsed by Descartes”: Diogo Costa, Hugo Goncalo Oliveira, and Alexandre Miguel Pinto, “ ‘In Reality There Are as Many Religions as There Are Papers’—First Steps Towards the Generation of Internet Memes” (Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computational Creativity, Park City, Utah, Brigham Young University, 2015).
209 “Celebrities intensify their celebrity images”: Boorstin, Image, 65.
210 “While internet memes”: Lauren Michele Jackson, “A Unified Theory of Meme Death,” The Atlantic (blog), Dec. 7, 2017.
212 Kim posted a shot of herself: Ade Onibada, “This Picture of Kim Kardashian Posing in Her Yeezys Has Become a Meme,” BuzzFeed, Aug. 7, 2018.
213 when she revisits the site: Palmer Haasch, “Kim Kardashian Re-Created Her Famous Meme Peeking Out from Behind a Tree on ‘The Kardashians,’ ” Business Insider, May 6, 2022.
213 “Let’s just get you a salad”: Fiona Ward, “Kendall Jenner Poked Fun at Her Cucumber-Chopping Moment in a New Ad, and the Internet’s Loving It,” Glamour, Jan. 19, 2023.

Everywoman (2013-2020)

214 “By the time that it had reached”: Samantha Coombes, “The Internet Responds to Kanye West’s ‘Bound 2’ Video,” Gigwise, Nov. 21, 2013, www.gigwise.com.
214 “Richard Prince’s Cowboy photographs”: Jerry Saltz, “Jerry Saltz on Kanye, Kim, and ‘the New Uncanny,’ ” Vulture, Nov. 25, 2013.
214 “whack”: Insanul Ahmed, “Kanye West Stops By the Breakfast Club, Charlamagne tha God Confronts Him on His Contradictions,” Complex, Nov. 26, 2013.
214 fodder for a viral parody: “Watch: Seth Rogen & James Franco in ‘Bound 3,’ ” Nov. 25, 2013, altcitizen.com/.
215 “Anna hates Kim”: Alexis Tereszcuk, “Met Gala Snub: Don’t Expect Kim Kardashian on the Cover of Vogue Anytime Soon!,” Radar Online, May 8, 2012.
215 Annie Leibovitz–shot April Vogue cover: “Kim, Kanye Finally Get Their Vogue Cover,” HuffPost, March 21, 2014.
215 “Well . . . I guess I’m cancelling”: “Sarah Michelle Gellar Cancelling Vogue Subscription After Kim and Kanye Cover,” CTV News, March 22, 2014.
215 “Why Are People Being Snobs”: Amy Larocca, “Why Are People Being Snobs About Kim Kardashian on the Cover of Vogue?,” Cut, March 26, 2014.
215 “I see the role of Vogue”: Cheryl Wischhover, “Anna Wintour Implies Kim and Kanye Are Not ‘Tasteful,’ ” Fashionista, Nov. 18, 2014.
215 The issue sold 500,000 copies: “Kim and Kanye’s Vogue Cover Beats Beyonce and Michelle Obama,” Mail Online, April 30, 2014.
215 He’d told Angie Martinez: Caitlin McDevitt, “Kanye West: Obama Is Just Trying to Be Cool,” Politico, Nov. 26, 2013.
215 “Michelle Obama cannot Instagram”: “Kanye West: Kim Kardashian Is Fashion Queen over First Lady,” CBS News, Oct. 30, 2013.
216 As Larocca noted: Larocca, “Why Are People Being Snobs About Kim Kardashian on the Cover of Vogue?”
216 John’s first Life cover: Lily Rothman and Liz Ronk, “John F. Kennedy’s Career in 20 LIFE Magazine Covers,” Life, May 26, 2017.
216 “semiotics of female dependence”: Lubin, Shooting Kennedy, 41.
216 read by nearly fourteen million Americans: David Plotz, “The Greatest Magazine Ever Published,” Slate, Dec. 27, 2013.
216 “A Front Runner’s Appealing Wife”: Rothman and Ronk, “John F. Kennedy’s Career in 20 LIFE Magazine Covers.”
216 The article celebrated Jackie’s: “Jackie Kennedy: A Frontrunner’s Appealing Wife,” Life, Aug. 24, 1959.
216 “The founder and director”: Lubin, interview by author.
217 Inside the article, Kanye’s knack: “Best Quotes from Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s Vogue Cover,” ABC News, March 26, 2014.
217 “The personal inevitably trumps”: Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2010).
218 Taylor and Burton were scandalous: Katy Stoddard, “Burton and Taylor, Private Lives Played Out in Public,” Guardian, July 22, 2013.
218 nearly two billion people: Elizabeth Paton, “Losing Meghan, Prince Harry, and (Potentially) Billions of Pounds,” New York Times, Jan. 9, 2020.
219 his testy 2013 interview: “Kanye West Interview,” The Breakfast Club (Power 105.1 FM, Nov. 26, 2013).
219 “galvanize amazing creative thinkers”: Anthony Osei, “Kanye West Announces Creative Company DONDA,” Complex, Jan. 4, 2012.
219 “People say you can do it”: “Kanye West Interview,” The Breakfast Club (Power 105.1 FM, Nov. 26, 2013).
219 “I’ve been working for two years”: Jon Blistein, “Kanye West Flips Out During Interview,” Rolling Stone, Nov. 26, 2013.
220 “Camelot, located nowhere in particular”: Norris J. Lacy quoted in P. J. C. Field, “Searching for Camelot,” Medium Ævum 87, no. 1 (2018): 1.
220 “There will be great presidents again”: James Piereson, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism (New York: Encounter Books, 2009), 188.
221 “initially rejected the inclusion”: Piereson, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, 188.
221 “I was her instrument”: Piereson, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, 187.
221 “One has to give her credit”: Piereson, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, 189.
221 In May 2015, two years after: “ ‘Selfie’ Named by Oxford Dictionaries as Word of 2013,” BBC News, Nov. 19, 2013.
221 Kim published Selfish: Kim Kardashian, Selfish (New York: Rizzoli Universe, 2015).
221 A colorful dispatch by Molly Mulshine: Molly Mulshine, “I Went to Kim Kardashian’s Book Signing Event, and It Was Complete Chaos,” Business Insider, May 6, 2015.
222 In May, she and Kanye had married: Nicole Briese, “A Look Back at Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s Lavish 2014 Wedding—That Spanned Two Countries!,” People, May 24, 2024.
222 in June, she’d released her phone-based app: Alex Hern, “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood Game Quadruples Developer’s Revenue,” Guardian, Nov. 10, 2014.
222 in November, she’d “broken the internet”: Fortini, “Break the Internet.”
223 accumulating about thirty-two million: Josh Duboff, “This Is Why Kim Kardashian Needs Her Own Goop,” Vanity Fair, June 4, 2015.
223 Google estimated that twenty-four billion selfies: Richard Gray, “24 Billion Selfies Were Uploaded to Google Last Year,” Mail Online, June 1, 2016.
223 the Victorian “calling card”: Elizabeth Wissinger, “Glamour Labour in the Age of Kardashian,” Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty 7, no. 2 (2016).
224 “A woman must continually watch herself”: Berger, Ways of Seeing, 46.
224 prompting Hilton to tweet: Jackie Willis, “Paris Hilton Claims She and Britney Spears ‘Invented the Selfie’ 11 Years Ago—See the Flashback Pics,” Yahoo Entertainment, Nov. 20, 2017.
225 “Time magazine’s market research”: Douglas and McDonnell, Celebrity, 191.
225 “human faces [were] 38% more likely”: Saeideh Bakhshi, David A. Shamma, and Eric Gilbert, “Faces Engage Us: Photos with Faces Attract More Likes and Comments on Instagram,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’14: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Toronto Ontario Canada: ACM, 2014), 965.
226 “Wouldn’t it be great”: Pepper Schwartz, “Kim Kardashian, Queen of Narcissism,” CNN, Aug. 13, 2014.
226 Complex magazine reveled: Gregory Babcock, “Kim Kardashian’s Best Selfies (Reviewed by an Art Critic),” Complex, Jan. 23, 2015.
226 “You win, Kim Kardashian”: Megan Garber, “Work of Art: The Honest Industry of Kim Kardashian’s ‘Selfish,’ ” Atlantic, May 13, 2015.
226 “In a climate where the harassment”: Katie Rogers, “Kim Kardashian, Her Selfie, and What It Means for Young Fans,” New York Times, March 14, 2016.
226 A UT Southwestern study in 2022: Mark P. Pressler et al., “Size and Perception of Facial Features with Selfie Photographs, and Their Implication in Rhinoplasty and Facial Plastic Surgery,” Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery 149, no. 4 (2022): 859.
226 “You painted a naked woman”: Berger, Ways of Seeing, 51.
227 #kyliejennerlipchallenge: “Kylie Jenner: Girls Want Her Fat Lips,” TMZ, April 20, 2015.
228 followed by upwards of forty million: Bernardo Sim, “KUWTK: Kylie Jenner’s Instagram Follower Growth over the Years,” Screen Rant, March 17, 2021.
228 “My followers and stuff”: “Lip Service,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, May 10, 2015.
229 “architects, subjects, and objects”: Lezra, interview by author.
229 “About Bruce”: “About Bruce: Part 1,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, May 17, 2015.
229 “Call me Cait”: Buzz Bissinger, “Caitlyn Jenner: The Full Story,” Vanity Fair, June 1, 2015.
229 Injectable fillers had been in the making: Paige Stables, “The Booming Business of Facial Fillers,” Allure, Feb. 16, 2021.
229 In 2014 and 2015, respectively, these apps: Ryan Lawler, “Uber Raises Giant $1.2 Billion Funding Round at a $17 Billion Valuation,” TechCrunch, June 6, 2014; Andrew Nusca, “Airbnb Is Now Worth an Eye-Popping $25.5 Billion,” Fortune, June 27, 2015.
230 “You can go pimp your ride”: “Lip Service.”
230 a 30.31 percent rise in Google search interest: Brittany Ward, Max Ward, and Boris Paskhover, “Google Trends as a Resource for Informing Plastic Surgery Marketing Decisions,” Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 42, no. 2 (2018): 598.
230 The American Society of Plastic Surgeons: “New Statistics Reflect the Changing Face of Plastic Surgery,” American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Feb. 25, 2016.
230 “collective behavior”: Robert Ezra Park and Ernest Watson Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924), 864.
230 generating $25 million in sales: Joel Best, Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 1.
230 “identifiable and explainable rises”: Colleen Dilenschneider, “Fads vs Trends: How Organizations Can Tell the Difference (and Why It Matters),” Colleen Dilenschneider: Know Your Bone, April 27, 2016, www.colleendilen.com.
231 “the gradual emergence”: Jia Tolentino, “The Age of Instagram Face,” New Yorker, Dec. 12, 2019.
231 “an overly tan skin tone”: Tolentino, “Age of Instagram Face.”
231 “1.5 billion social networking users”: Michael Chui et al., “The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity Through Social Technologies,” McKinsey Global Institute, July 2012.
232 a Vox piece about “sexfluencers”: Rebecca Jennings, “Where’s the Line Between Sex Work and Influencing?,” Vox, Oct. 28, 2021.
233 “under the old salesmanship”: Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda (New York: Liveright, 1928), 56.
233 “fashionable to women”: Edward L. Bernays Discusses the Green Ball, Orchestrated for Lucky Strikes, n.d., PR Museum.
233 he reached out in advance: Edward L. Bernays, Edward L. Bernays Discusses the Green Ball, Orchestrated for Lucky Strikes, n.d., PR Museum.
233 “the democratization of beauty”: Dayna Winter, “Powering the Pout: The (Other) Woman Behind Kylie Cosmetics,” Shopify (blog), May 11, 2017.
234 “world’s youngest self-made billionaire”: Natalie Robehmed, “At 21, Kylie Jenner Becomes the Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever,” Forbes, March 5, 2019.
235 “mediatization”: Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, The Mediated Construction of Reality (New York: Polity, 2017), 33.
235 “While ensemble casts are fantastic”: Nick Nelson, “The Power of a Picture,” Netflix, May 3, 2016, about.netflix.com.
236 “I had a very good convo”: Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian), Twitter, June 13, 2018.
236 “open Snapchat anymore”: Kaya Yurieff, “Snapchat Stock Loses $1.3 Billion After Kylie Jenner Tweet,” CNN Money, Feb. 22, 2018.
236 the Oxford Dictionaries announced: “The Oxford Word of the Year 2015 Is . . . ,” Nov. 2015.
237 “develop[s], maintain[s] and promot[es]”: “About,” Unicode Consortium, accessed April 15, 2025, www.unicode.org.
237 “creates a black-and-white shape outline”: Ziccarelli, interview by author, June 1, 2023.
237 In 2021, Unicode asserted: Jennifer Daniel, “Emoji Frequency,” Unicode (blog), 2021, home.unicode.org.
237 “visual cacophony”: Peretti, “Capitalism and Schizophrenia.”
237 “Images are holistic signs”: Danesi, interview by author, May 21, 2023.
238 in 2015 that Time magazine reported: Megan McCluskey, “See the Most Googled Person in Each Country in 2015,” Time, Dec. 22, 2015.
238 “first practical attempt to bridge”: Danesi, interview by author, May 21, 2023.
239 A study of eighty-five hundred Craigslist ads: “Sex Traffickers Are Using a Secret Emoji Language to Exploit Victims,” Vice, April 26, 2018.
239 The app was reportedly downloaded: Joshua Espinoza, “Kim Kardashian’s Emoji App Is Making About $1 Million per Minute,” Complex, Dec. 23, 2015.
239 StephMoji eventually scored: Nathan McAlone, “Steph Curry’s New App Has Beaten Kim Kardashian—Here’s What It’s Like,” Business Insider, June 2, 2016.
240 In 2019, David Liebensohn: Richard Johnson, “Kim Kardashian’s Kimoji App Involved in Messy Legal Dispute,” Page Six, Feb. 7, 2019.
240 “claims of breach of a partnership”: Liebensohn v. Kim Kardashian West, Case No. CIV-19-137-C (U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, Feb. 12, 2019).
240 “there were no exhibits”: Gabriella Ziccarelli, “More Kardashian Drama,” Technology & Marketing Law Blog, March 16, 2019.
240 “From an intellectual property point of view”: Ziccarelli, interview by author, June 1, 2023.
241 when she sued the Gap: Eriq Gardner, “Kim Kardashian Settles Lawsuit over Look-Alike in Old Navy Ad (Exclusive),” Hollywood Reporter, Aug. 29, 2012.
241 Khloé was sued by Xposure Photos: J. D. Knapp, “Khloé Kardashian Sued After Sharing Photo of Herself on Instagram,” Variety, April 27, 2017.
241 Mike Miller sued the Jenner sisters: Ashley Iasimone, “Photographer Sues Kylie & Kendall Jenner over T-Shirts Using His Tupac Photos,” Billboard, July 7, 2017.
242 Kylie was sued: Devon Abelman, “Kylie Jenner Is Being Sued for Copyright Infringement—AGAIN,” Allure, July 26, 2017.
242 Kim was sued by the Danish makeup artist: Kelby Vera, “Kim Kardashian Is Being Sued by Danish Makeup Artist over Copyright,” Mail Online, July 26, 2017.
242 Liebensohn took to the streets: Chris White, “Developer of ‘Kimoji’ App Says Kim Kardashian Ruined His Life,” Mail Online, April 19, 2023.
242 “Some people are born”: “Oh Baby!,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, July 3, 2016.
243 campy Khloé happens to “know a guy”: “Fake It til’ You Make It,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, May 29, 2016.
243 “Forms of disguise, concealment, and deceit”: Remo Gramigna, “Faces in Disguise: Masks, Concealment, and Deceit,” Topoi 41, no. 4 (2022): 741.
244 In 2016, “post-truth”: “Oxford Word of the Year 2016,” Oxford Languages, 2016.
244 “there are no facts”: Tarun Kattumana and Simon Truwant, The Post-Truth Condition: Philosophical Reflections (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2024).
244 The Guardian launched a column: Alan Yuhas, “The Lies Trump Told This Week: From His Tax Plan to the Iraq War,” Guardian, June 24, 2016.
245 “a winner with the end of the party”: “ ‘Billionaire Everyman’ Trump Has ’Em Eating out of His Hand,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, Oct. 11, 2015.
246 “put themselves in the physical place”: Sine Heitmann, “Film Tourism Planning and Development—Questioning the Role of Stakeholders and Sustainability,” Tourism and Hospitality Planning & Development 7, no. 1 (2010).
246 “power of place”: Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997).
247 “the weak to outmaneuver”: Gramigna, “Faces in Disguise,” 743.
249 “for a presidential candidate”: Maura Judkis, “Donald Trump as ‘Cheeto Jesus,’ and the Political Legacy of a Dusty Orange Snack,” Washington Post, June 17, 2016.
249 “a good, old-fashioned meme”: Judkis, “Donald Trump as ‘Cheeto Jesus.’ ”
249 “make insults creative again”: Eve Peyser, “Happy Press Freedom Day, Now Stop Calling Trump a Cheeto,” Vice, May 3, 2017.
249 “the conflict between truth and politics”: Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Many Politicians Lie. But Trump Has Elevated the Art of Fabrication,” New York Times, Aug. 7, 2017.
249 Some of these institutional changes: Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff, United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2019).
249 “less than 20 percent”: Higdon and Huff, United States of Distraction.
250 dramatic break with Nike: Jason Belzer, “Sneaker Wars: Kanye West Signs Deal with Adidas, Drake with Jordan Brand,” Forbes, Dec. 5, 2013.
250 auteur artists like Vanessa Beecroft: Leah Mandel, “A Brief History of Kanye West’s Work with Vanessa Beecroft,” Fader, Feb. 11, 2016.
250 Yeezy 4, shown at the Four Freedoms Park: Guy Trebay, “The Scene at Kanye’s Show: Long Waits, Sweaty Guests, and a Hobbling Model,” New York Times, Sept. 8, 2016.
251 When she dropped KKW’s first promotional photo: Sarah Wu, “This Is What Kim Kardashian Actually Said in Response to KKW Blackface Allegations,” Teen Vogue, Nov. 8, 2017.
251 she sued for libel: Ashley Cullins, “Kim Kardashian Sues Website over Claims She Faked Paris Robbery,” Hollywood Reporter, Oct. 11, 2016.
251 “It is absolutely critical”: Musa al-Gharbi, “Race and the Race for the White House: On Social Research in the Age of Trump,” American Sociologist 49, no. 4 (2018): 515.
252 “white Americans rose up”: Al-Gharbi, “Race and the Race for the White House,” 501.
252 “Trump not only garnered”: Al-Gharbi, “Race and the Race for the White House,” 503.
252 “the goal of Strangers in Their Own Land”: Al-Gharbi, “Race and the Race for the White House,” 514.
252 Kanye was hospitalized: Joe Coscarelli, “Kanye West Is Hospitalized for ‘Psychiatric Emergency’ Hours After Canceling Tour,” New York Times, Nov. 22, 2016.
252 That summer, a Yeezy model: Ben Dandridge-Lemco, “Kanye West’s Yeezy Boost 750s Sold Out in Seconds and People Are Pissed,” Fader, June 8, 2016.
253 “The acceptance I refer to”: Deva R. Woodly, The Politics of Common Sense: How Social Movements Use Public Discourse to Change Politics and Win Acceptance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 16.
253 “opinion environments”: Woodly, Politics of Common Sense, 27.
253 the branding expert Jeetendr Sehdev: Jeetendr Sehdev, The Kim Kardashian Principle: Why Shameless Sells (and How to Do It Right) (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017).
254 the award-winning poet: Sam Riviere, Kim Kardashian’s Marriage (London: Faber & Faber, 2015).
254 A 2019 play: Jasmine Lee-Jones, Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021).
254 The New York Times compiled: Kevin Quealy, “The Complete List of Trump’s Twitter Insults (2015–2021),” New York Times, Jan. 19, 2021.
254 article explaining his tax returns: Russ Buettner et al., “Charting an Empire: A Timeline of Trump’s Finances,” New York Times, Sept. 27, 2020.
255 “Oh, do we have a lot of errors?”: Lainey Sidell, “This Writer Exposes All the Inconsistencies in ‘KUWTK,’ ” BET, May 23, 2017.
255 “It’s a comment on Fame”: Dirk Standen, “Exclusive: Kanye West on His ‘Famous’ Video, Which Might Be His Most Thought-Provoking Work Yet,” Vanity Fair, June 25, 2016.
255 “Many men have spent a great deal of time”: “British Colleges Study Kim Kardashian’s Rear,” Daily Mail, Nov. 14, 2015.
256 cite a USA Today poll: Mari Fitzduff, ed., Why Irrational Politics Appeals: Understanding the Allure of Trump (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017).
256 A New Republic article: Bruce Bartlett, “He Is Even Dumber Than We Thought,” New Republic, June 8, 2020.
256 An analysis by Carnegie Mellon: Elliot Schumacher and Maxine Eskenazi, “A Readability Analysis of Campaign Speeches from the 2016 US Presidential Campaign,” Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, March 15, 2016.
256 “They may be vacuous and bland”: Jack Grove, “Academia Is Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” Times Higher Education, Nov. 12, 2015.
257 “When energy is spent”: Meredith Jones, “Why We All Need to Keep Up with the Kardashians,” Conversation, Nov. 26, 2015.
257 Kim and four-year-old North: Ariel Hauter, “Kim Kardashian West,” Interview, Aug. 27, 2017.
258 “leery proximity to blackness”: Jackson, “How Kim Kardashian West Came to Represent America.”
258 “pundits and comics to talk endlessly”: Russell L. Peterson, Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 64.
259 “I looked out, the field was”: Tamara Keith, “The Surprising Reason Why the Park Service Won’t Count Folks at Trump’s Inauguration,” NPR, Jan. 17, 2025.
259 “the largest audience to ever”: Keith, “Surprising Reason Why the Park Service Won’t Count Folks at Trump’s Inauguration.”
259 who defined it as knowingness: Glenn Ward, Postmodernism (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003).
260 a linguistic analysis: Sophie Van Der Zee et al., “A Personal Model of Trumpery: Linguistic Deception Detection in a Real-World High-Stakes Setting,” Psychological Science 33, no. 1 (2022): 3–17.
260 “repeated information is”: Aumyo Hassan and Sarah J. Barber, “The Effects of Repetition Frequency on the Illusory Truth Effect,” Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 6, no. 1 (2021): 38.
260 In 2018, Kourtney would head: Jonah Engel Bromwich, “Ms. Kardashian Goes to Washington,” New York Times, April 24, 2018.
260 “made me feel like Superman”: “Kanye West Says Trump Hat ‘Made Me Feel Like Superman,’ ” BBC, Oct. 11, 2018.
260 Kim would visit the following year: Maria Pasquini, “Trump Says Kim Kardashian Will Be ‘One of the Most Successful Lawyers’ During Her White House Visit,” People, June 13, 2019.
261 Kim would go head-to-head: Kelly Gilmore, “Kim Kardashian Beats Hillary Clinton in Legal Quiz,” E! Online, Aug. 24, 2022.
261 Within days of Conway’s “alternative facts” gaffe: Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, “George Orwell’s ‘1984’ Is Suddenly a Best-Seller,” New York Times, Jan. 25, 2017.
261 Craig Burke, the publisher’s publicity director: Freytas-Tamura, “George Orwell’s ‘1984’ Is Suddenly a Best-Seller.”
261 “What Orwell feared were those”: Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking, 1986), vii.
262 A Pew survey showed: Bradley Jones, “An Examination of the 2016 Electorate, Based on Validated Voters,” Pew Research Center, Aug. 9, 2018.
262 “The turn of the century”: Maggie Haberman and David E. Sanger, “Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views,” New York Times, March 26, 2016.
262 a YouTube compilation video: “Kardashians Being Nostalgic for 9 Minutes Straight,” E!, accessed May 12, 2025, YouTube.
263 “When a population becomes distracted”: Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.
263 “Happy Cinco de Mayo!”: Tierney McAffee, “Donald Trump Wishes Everyone Happy Cinco de Mayo, Says: I Love Hispanics,” People, May 5, 2016.
263 “glorifies a lifestyle that reduces cultures”: Victoria Shirley, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians and Cultural Commodification,” unpublished manuscript, 2021.
264 “theater in a white ‘wifebeater’ ”: Jackson, White Negroes, 2.
264 In 2011, as a guest: “Kim Kardashian,” H8R, Sept. 28, 2011.
264 “assert[ions] that the ‘BBL body’ ”: Jordan Taliha McDonald, “Depreciating Assets,” Lux, Winter 2022.
265 “Black women have higher rates”: Marian F. MacDorman et al., “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Maternal Mortality in the United States Using Enhanced Vital Records, 2016–2017,” American Journal of Public Health 111, no. 9 (2021): 1677.
265 A 2023 University of Pennsylvania study: Daniel J. Hopkins, Yphtach Lelkes, and Samuel Wolken, “The Rise of and Demand for Identity-Oriented Media Coverage,” American Journal of Political Science 69, no. 2 (2025): 483–500.
265 Musa al-Gharbi found that there was an explosion: Musa al-Gharbi, “The ‘Great Awokening’ Is Winding Down,” Musa Al-Gharbi (blog), Feb. 8, 2023.
265 “So, if it’s a genuine disadvantage”: Musa al-Gharbi, “We Have Never Been Woke: Social Justice Discourse, Inequality, and the Rise of a New Elite,” Menard Family George Washington Forum, Ohio University, Jan. 20, 2022.
266 a chiding from the mayor of Kyoto: Kc Ifeanyi, “Kyoto’s Mayor Tells Kim Kardashian ‘Kimono’ Shouldn’t Be ‘Monopolized,’ ” Fast Company, July 1, 2019.
266 “the VMA for Best Hip-Hop Video”: Jackson, White Negroes, 2.
266 “comparison of Google search volume”: “ ‘Selfie’ Pronounced Word of Year, ‘Twerk’ Is Now Sulking at Home,” Time, Nov. 18, 2013.
266 “The idea that any artistic”: Jackson, White Negroes, 3.
267 “Appropriation is everywhere”: Jackson, White Negroes, 2.
267 “Probably it was in a rap song”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 199.
267 after successfully visiting the White House: Kevin Liptak, Maegan Vazquez, and Betsy Klein, “Kim Kardashian Meets with Trump to Discuss Prison Reform,” CNN, May 30, 2018.
267 Kim Kardashian wore Fulani braids: Marci Robin, “Kim Kardashian West Is Being Dragged for Wearing Fulani Braids to the MTV Awards,” Allure, June 18, 2018.
267 sharing a Snapchat video of herself: Emma Powell, “Kim Kardashian Accused of Cultural Appropriation with ‘Bo Derek’ Braids,” Standard, Jan. 29, 2018.
268 “is a process that brings people together”: Emma Dabiri, Don’t Touch My Hair (London: Penguin Books, 2019).
268 In 2015, Kylie posted a photo: Ira Madison III, “ ‘Hunger Games’ Star Amandla Stenberg Blasted Cultural Appropriation on Kylie Jenner’s Instagram,” BuzzFeed, July 12, 2015.
268 “people into objects”: Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 14.
268 “Despite the illusion of giving understanding”: Sontag, On Photography, 111.
268 “In no way am I ever”: Brooklyn White, “Kim Kardashian Is Being Called Out for Culturally Appropriating Fulani Braids AGAIN,” Teen Vogue, June 18, 2018.
269 “It’s a hairdo!”: Allison P. Davis and Marcus Jones, “Bo Derek Really Doesn’t Want to Talk About Cornrows,” Cut, July 16, 2015.
269 In high school, Kim was voted: “Kim Kardashian Was Voted ‘Most Likely to Lie About Her Ethnicity’ in High School,” HuffPost, July 10, 2013.
269 “Black hair has been a contested issue”: Saran Donahoo and Asia D. Smith, “Controlling the Crown: Legal Efforts to Professionalize Black Hair,” Race and Justice 12, no. 1 (2022): 183.
270 “never represent Blue Cross”: Donahoo and Smith, “Controlling the Crown,” 187.
270 “moral credentialing”: Musa al-Gharbi, “Resistance as Sacrifice: Towards an Ascetic Antiracism,” Musa al-Gharbi (blog), June 13, 2019, musaalgharbi.com.
270 Bo Derek defense: Kenji Yoshino, “The Pressure to Cover,” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 15, 2006.
271 “the Mexican and Latinx community”: @diet_prada, “@kendalljenner Has Revealed @drink818, Her New Tequila Brand That Was Four Years in the Making,” Instagram, Feb. 17, 2021, www.instagram.com.
271 “Culture for Sale”: Jason D. Lin et al., “Culture for Sale: Unpacking Consumer Perceptions of Cultural Appropriation,” Journal of Consumer Research 51, no. 3 (2024): 571–94.
272 celebrity interest in tequila: Martineau, interview by author, June 26, 2023.
272 In 1955, Bing Crosby and his bandleader: Joseph V. Micallef, “Herradura: The Pursuit of Perfection,” HuffPost, June 30, 2017.
273 Lieber calls a “symbiosis”: Chavie Lieber, “Kim Kardashian’s Clothes Are Constantly Being Knocked Off. Now She’s Fighting Back,” Vox, Feb. 26, 2019.
274 On February 19, she tweeted: Layla Ilchi, “Kim Kardashian Calls Out Fast-Fashion Brands for Designer Knock-Offs,” Women’s Wear Daily, Feb. 19, 2019.
274 “one of the most polluting”: “Fashion for the Earth,” Earth Day, accessed May 25, 2025, www.earthday.org.
274 On February 20, she filed: Kate Taylor, “Kim Kardashian Is Suing Fast-Fashion Brand Missguided for $10 Million, Accusing the Company of Profiting from Copying Her Outfits and Image,” Business Insider, Feb. 22, 2019.
275 identifies the common traits: Jean-Marie Dru, Thank You for Disrupting: The Disruptive Business Philosophies of the World’s Great Entrepreneurs (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2019).
275 “I ended up using”: Donald Trump, Trump: The Art of the Deal (New York: Random House, 2016).
275 Kim speaks of being eighteen: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 74–75.
276 “world’s youngest self-made woman billionaire”: “Elizabeth Holmes,” Forbes, n.d., www .forbes.com/profile/elizabeth-holmes/.
276 Kim told W Magazine: Lauren McCarthy, “Kim Kardashian Just Wants to Solve Life’s Little Problems,” W Magazine, Sept. 13, 2019.
277 Blakely told Inc.com: “How Spanx Got Started,” Inc., Jan. 20, 2012.
277 “Put her SKIMS on”: Drake and 21 Savage, “More M’s,” 2022, genius.com.
277 “models of all shapes and sizes”: Kellie Ell, “Kim Kardashian West Uses Real Women in Skims Solutionwear Campaign,” Women’s Wear Daily, Aug. 30, 2019.
278 Kim was already featured: “On the Cover of New York Magazine: A Decade in Review,” New York, Nov. 25, 2019.
278 The headliner of the debut: Brooke Bobb, “Kim Kardashian West’s First Skims Model Is Alice Marie Johnson, the Woman She Freed from Prison,” Vogue, Aug. 29, 2019.
278 In a study that deconstructs: Alfred J. M. Edema, “Beyond Branding: The Logical Consequence of Packaging and Repackaging in Corporate Management Strategy,” Scientific Research Journal 4, no. 4 (2016).
279 “contemporary advertisements sell feelings”: Stjepan Meštrović, Postemotional Society (London: SAGE, 1996), 81.
279 “first-day sales numbers”: “Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS Launch Made $2 Million Within Minutes,” TMZ, Sept. 11, 2019.
279 Spanx earned $4 million: “Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS Launch Made $2 Million Within Minutes.”
279 Cozy Collection: Deirdre Simonds, “Kim Kardashian Goes Old School in New SKIMS Campaign,” Mail Online, May 24, 2020.
279 Kim called Kanye: Taylor Nicole Rogers, “Kim Kardashian Said Kanye West Was the ‘Ghost Creative Director’ of the Shapewear Brand She Launched in September and That He Held a 2-Hour Meeting About Product’s Packaging,” Business Insider, Nov. 8, 2019.
280 our moms had their “girdles”: Sam Sanders, “The Immense Powers of Kim Kardashian Are in Transition—Not Decline,” Vulture, Sept. 22, 2022.
280 “Familiar ideas are processed faster”: Thompson, Hit Makers, 43.
280 Nordstrom became the first: Hayley Peterson, “Kim Kardashian West and Nordstrom Just Announced a Major Deal,” Business Insider, Jan. 21, 2020.
280 “Ever since I was 10 years old”: Samantha Grindell Pettyjohn, “Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS Brand Designed the Official Team USA Undergarments, Pajamas, and Loungewear for the Tokyo Olympics,” Business Insider, Jan. 21, 2021.
280 Kourtney Kardashian and Megan Fox: Caroline Blair, “Kourtney Kardashian Straddles Megan Fox on Toilet During Skims Photo Shoot,” Page Six, Aug. 1, 2022.
281 In 2021, SKIMS announced: Emily Kirkpatrick, “Kim Kardashian’s Brand Skims Announces Fendi Collaboration,” Vanity Fair, Oct. 25, 2021.
281 “Is Skims the new Victoria’s Secret?”: “Is Skims the New Victoria’s Secret?,” Retail Oasis, The Future of Retail, 2021.
281 watched by 4.1 million people: Katie Campione, “ ‘The White Lotus’ Season 2 Finale Checks In Double the Audience of Season 1 Closer,” Deadline, Dec. 12, 2022.
281 Ice Spice costarred in a few videos: Gabi Stevenson, “Ice Spice Danced with North West on TikTok Weeks After the 9-Year-Old Drew a Portrait of the Rapper in a Viral Video,” Business Insider, March 4, 2023.
281 SKIMS was expanding its offerings: Jordan Valinsky, “Kim Kardashian Is Making Skims for Men,” CNN, Oct. 23, 2023.
281 most elite and respected athletes: Michelle Lee, “Nick Bosa, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Neymar Jr. Show Off Their Athlete Bods in Spicy SKIMS Campaign,” People, Oct. 23, 2023.
282 “the automatic self-reproduction”: Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. Jay M. Bernstein (London: Routledge, 2007), 185.
282 an era of “datafication”: Couldry and Hepp, Mediated Construction of Reality, 35.
282 “dead emotions from the past”: Meštrović, Postemotional Society, 39.
282 “emotional anger at the history”: Meštrović, Postemotional Society, 39.
282 “really constitutes the institutionalization”: Meštrović, Postemotional Society, 51.
283 “The other-directed type”: Meštrović, Postemotional Society, 46.
283 “WHO is responsible for the recycling?”: Meštrović, Postemotional Society, 4.
284 “Packaging is not only a communication vehicle”: Edema, “Beyond Branding,” 12.
284 “re-release its backlog of animated features”: Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, 265.
284 “SKIMS currently has 9 fabrics”: Lindsey Sparkman, “Exposing a Fast Fashion Wolf in Shapewear’s Clothing,” Earth Day (blog), Oct. 3, 2023.
285 “They don’t disclose anything”: Jasmin Malik Chua, “A Nonprofit Assessed Skims’ Corporate Accountability. It Didn’t Go Well,” Sourcing Journal, March 4, 2024.
285 “some people expressed their frustration”: Leyla Mohammed, “A TikTok Uncovering the Manufacturer Behind Kim Kardashian’s Skims Products Has Gone Viral,” BuzzFeed News, Jan. 23, 2023.
285 “We consulted with experts”: Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian), Twitter, Sept. 26, 2019.
285 “really excited . . . to have a meeting”: Sarah Mills and Margarita Antidze, “Exclusive: Kim Kardashian Praises Climate Activist Thunberg and Hopes for Meeting,” Reuters, Oct. 8, 2019.
286 One critic, Tahirah Hairston: Tahirah Hairston, “I Hate How Much I Love My Skims,” Cut, Sept. 2, 2021.
286 In 2021, SKIMS was valued: Andrea Chang and Wendy Lee, “Why Kim Kardashian’s Skims Is Making a Splash with Investors and the Shapewear Market,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2024.

The Donda Era (2020-2024)

287 “My great-grandparents had a string-cheese factory”: “Fights, Friendships, and Fashion Week, Part 2,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, April 2, 2020.
288 “They’re all chanting her name”: “Mother Armenia,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Sept. 20, 2015.
288 “the annihilation of the Armenians”: Vartan Matiossian, The Politics of Naming the Armenian Genocide: Language, History, and “Medz Yeghern” (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), 2.
288 “The repetition of unproven claims”: Matiossian, Politics of Naming the Armenian Genocide, 2.
289 “TV provoked deep involvement”: Arjen Mulder, Understanding Media Theory: Language, Image, Sound, Behavior (Rotterdam: V2_ Publishing, 2004), 46.
289 Scale, as Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy put it: Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy, eds., MediaSpace: Place, Scale, and Culture in a Media Age (New York: Routledge, 2004).
289 “suggests that electronic media collapse”: David Bobbitt, “Scale in the Media Theory of Marshall McLuhan,” Media Fields Journal 4 (2012): 2.
290 90 percent of Americans said the internet: Colleen McClain et al., “The Internet and the Pandemic,” Pew Research Center, Sept. 1, 2021.
290 “The Internet,” Bobbitt adds: Bobbitt, “Scale in the Media Theory of Marshall McLuhan,” 6.
290 “16 million (less than 1 percent of the world population)”: Bobbitt, “Scale in the Media Theory of Marshall McLuhan,” 9.
292 “The influencer is dead”: Priya Elan, “ ‘Being Too Aspirational Is Repellent Now’—the Rise of the ‘Genuinfluencers,’ ” Guardian, Aug. 12, 2021.
292 Kim announced another arm of her enterprise: “Kim Kardashian and Jay Sammons Launch SKKY Partners,” Business Wire, Sept. 7, 2022.
293 “Las Vegas is a great sociological lab”: “What Doesn’t Quite Work in Vegas Will Probably Stay in Vegas,” Las Vegas Sun, June 18, 2006.
293 “On the net, everything is occurring”: Douglas Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age (New York: OR Books, 2010), 68.
293 “success has less to do”: Rushkoff, Program or Be Programmed, 69.
294 Leonard Goldenson, founder of ABC: Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, 264.
295 “to ‘yassify’ something”: Shane O’Neill, “What Does It Mean to ‘Yassify’ Anything?,” New York Times, Nov. 24, 2021.
295 In 2022, Vice asked: Arielle Richards, “Bimbofication Is Taking Over. What Does That Mean for You?,” Vice, Feb. 2, 2022.
295 Fiona Fairbairn posted the “Bimbo Manifesto”: Pernell Quilon, “This Woman Created a ‘Bimbo Manifesto’ That’s Going Viral on TikTok, and Honestly, It’s a Work of Art,” BuzzFeed, Jan. 16, 2022.
296 “the process by which the principles of the Disney theme parks”: Alan Bryman, The Disneyization of Society (London: SAGE, 2004), 1.
296 “the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant”: George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (London: SAGE, 2013), 1.
296 “a process of change”: Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 6.
296 “Weber saw the 19th-and early 20th-century bureaucracy”: George Ritzer, The Globalization of Nothing 2 (London: SAGE, 2007), 17.
297 “the best means to an end”: George Ritzer, Explorations in Social Theory: From Metatheorizing to Rationalization (London: SAGE, 2001), 181.
297 “only a few commentators”: Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War, 26.
297 “the interpenetration of the global and the local”: Ritzer, McDonaldization of Society, 167.
297 “McSpaghetti in the Philippines”: Ritzer, Globalization of Nothing 2, 168.
297 “virtually every new hotel”: Bryman, Disneyization of Society, 31.
298 North and Penelope’s joint party: Corinne Heller, “North West and Penelope Disick Get Joint Moana-Themed Birthday Party,” E! Online, June 25, 2017.
298 North was given a poop-emoji-themed party: Emily Mae Czachor, “Kim Kardashian Threw North West a Birthday Party, and It Was Poop Emoji Themed,” BuzzFeed, June 16, 2021.
298 Dream Kardashian enjoyed a Barbie-themed party: Georgia Slater, “Dream Kardashian Celebrates Her 5th Birthday with Epic Barbie-Themed Party—See the Photos!,” People .com, Nov. 11, 2021.
298 “reduc[es] a living, three-dimensional person”: Peterson, Strange Bedfellows, 73.
299 Kylie Jenner posed as Marie Antoinette: Christine Lennon, “Kylie Jenner Is Having Her Cake and Eating It Too,” Harper’s Bazaar, Feb. 4, 2020.
299 “a representation, a Marie Antoinette”: Callie Ahlgrim, “Kanye West Referred to Kim Kardashian as ‘a Marie Antoinette of Our Time’—and Fans Are Torn over Whether It Was a Compliment,” Business Insider, April 4, 2018.
300 Though the killing of King Louis XVI: Weber, interview by author, July 11, 2023.
300 “sort of a Cinderella story”: Weber, interview by author.
301 “he had been told by tutors”: Weber, interview by author.
301 “crazy new hairdo”: Weber, interview by author.
301 “basically a billboard for personal style”: Weber, interview by author.
301 “The first versions of what would later”: Weber, interview by author.
301 Previously, seamstresses and tailors: Weber, interview by author.
302 “to live on a farm”: Via Bleidner, If You Lived Here You’d Be Famous by Now: True Stories from Calabasas (New York: Flatiron Books, 2021).
302 A massive 2023 study: Asia Grace, “Gen Z Women Take Money Tips from Kendall and Kylie Jenner: Study,” New York Post, Sept. 25, 2023.
302 “Marie Antoinette—even if she understood”: Weber, interview by author.
304 “Marie Antoinette would likely have been”: Richard Covington, “Marie Antoinette,” Smithsonian, Nov. 2006.
304 “according to [the] psychological theory”: Oleg Smirnov and Pei-Hsun Hsieh, “COVID-19, Climate Change, and the Finite Pool of Worry in 2019 to 2021 Twitter Discussions,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 43 (2022): e2210988119.
305 “great advice for women in business”: Elizabeth Wagmeister, “ ‘Money Always Matters’: The Kardashians Tell All About Their New Reality TV Reign,” Variety, March 9, 2022.
305 Kim’s “glamour labour”: Wissinger, “Glamour Labour in the Age of Kardashian,” 144.
305 “You can say a lot of things”: Janet Mock, “Kim Kardashian West,” Interview, Aug. 27, 2017.
305 “wages of glamour”: Wissinger, “Glamour Labour in the Age of Kardashian,” 145.
305 “the work of being watched”: Mark Andrejevic, Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 6.
306 more than half of young people: “Too Many People Want to Be Social-Media Influencers,” Economist, Oct. 29, 2024.
306 she and Kylie Jenner reposted a meme: Anya Meyerowitz, “Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner Called Out Instagram for ‘Trying to Be TikTok,’ ” Glamour, July 27, 2022.
306 Paul Fairie, who posted a thread: Paul Fairie (@paulisci), “The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore ,” Twitter, July 19, 2023, x.com/paulisci.
307 resulting in the deaths: Chris Willman, “9-Year-Old Boy Dies from Astroworld Injuries, Pushing Death Toll to 10,” Variety, Nov. 15, 2021.
307 “I just really go off the fans’ energy”: Shannon McDonagh, “Astroworld: Travis Scott Says He Didn’t Know About Deaths on Stage,” Euronews, Oct. 12, 2021.
308 “The degree of novelty”: Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, “The Spread of True and False News Online,” Science 359, no. 6380 (2018): 1146–51.
308 “is mutating and taking different forms”: Kari Paul, “Astroworld Disaster Fuels Wave of Satanic Conspiracy Theories on TikTok,” Guardian, Nov. 9, 2021.
308 TikTok had been designed: Kyle Giffin, “The Neuropsychology of Tik-Tok,” Medium, Dec. 15, 2020, kylegiff.medium.com/.
308 “perceiv[ing] a connection”: Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “apophenia,” accessed June 27, 2025, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apophenia.
308 “slot-machine effect”: Bridger Beal-Cvetko, “ ‘Slot Machine Effect’: Utah Alleges ‘Coercive’ TikTok Tactics on Young Users in Unredacted Lawsuit,” KSL.com, Jan. 29, 2024.
309 “faces a number of risk factors”: Paul, “Astroworld Disaster Fuels Wave of Satanic Conspiracy Theories on TikTok.”
310 “the first to be announced dead”: Ikran Dahir, “A Teenager’s Photos Went Viral After People Claimed She Died at Astroworld. She’s Alive—and in Australia,” BuzzFeed News, Nov. 13, 2021.
310 “I’m not buying”: Jem Aswad, “Public Enemy’s Chuck D Defends Travis Scott, Calls on Concert Promoters to Stop ‘Shucking Their Most Crucial Responsibility,’ ” Variety, Nov. 19, 2021.
311 NPR found that Live Nation: Anastasia Tsioulcas, “Live Nation, a Company Behind Astroworld, Has a Long History of Safety Violations,” NPR, Nov. 8, 2021.
311 “Travis and I are broken”: Megan Johnson, “Kylie Jenner Says She and Travis Scott Are ‘Broken and Devastated’ as Astroworld Victims Are Named,” Yahoo Entertainment, Nov. 7, 2021.
312 “The emergence of celebrity”: Chris Rojek, Celebrity, 13.
313 If we want hard proof: Samantha Kay, Rory Mulcahy, and Joy Parkinson, “When Less Is More: The Impact of Macro and Micro Social Media Influencers’ Disclosure,” Journal of Marketing Management 36, no. 3–4 (2020): 248–78.
313 “the number of people empowered”: Kevin Munger, The YouTube Apparatus (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2024), 8.
313 “I hate to be the one”: Bianca Borissova, “TikTok’s Obsession with Exposing Strangers for Cheating and Being Shitty Friends, Explained,” Screenshot, Dec. 28, 2022.
314 “when one’s words or actions”: Alesandra Dubin, “Why Cancel Culture Is So Toxic and How to Effectively Hold Folks Accountable, According to Social Media Experts,” Business Insider, Oct. 28, 2022.
314 A 2020 Pew survey: Emily A. Vogels et al., “Americans and ‘Cancel Culture’: Where Some See Calls for Accountability, Others See Censorship, Punishment,” Pew Research Center, May 19, 2021.
315 “included . . . ‘The Cremaster Cycle’ ”: Elizabeth Paton, Vanessa Friedman, and Jessica Testa, “When High Fashion and QAnon Collide,” New York Times, Nov. 28, 2022.
315 Studies show that political polarization: David E. Broockman and Joshua L. Kalla, “Selective Exposure and Echo Chambers in Partisan Television Consumption: Evidence from Linked Viewership, Administrative, and Survey Data,” American Journal of Political Science 69, no. 3 (2025): 847–65.
316 “people kept messaging me”: @bethennyfrankel, Instagram, Nov. 26, 2022, www.instagram.com.
316 “attack against our young ones”: Ryan Glasspiegel, “Cooper Kupp Slams Balenciaga over Child Endangerment After Disturbing Ad,” New York Post, Nov. 29, 2022.
316 “as a mother of four”: Hannah Getahun, “Kim Kardashian Says She’s ‘Disgusted’ by the Balenciaga Holiday Ad Campaign That’s Been Accused of Sexualizing Minors,” Business Insider, Nov. 27, 2022.
316 “all celebrities are controlled”: Simone Carter, “Kanye West on Balenciaga: Controversy Proves All Celebs Are ‘Controlled,’ ” Newsweek, Nov. 28, 2022.
316 Balenciaga was quick to sue: Parija Kavilanz, Lianne Kolirin, and Toyin Owoseje, “Balenciaga Suing Production Company for $25 Million over Controversial Campaign,” CNN, Nov. 29, 2022.
317 “event for us, emotionally, live”: Meštrović, Postemotional Society, 65.
317 “a confluence between extremely online”: Matthew N. Hannah, “A Conspiracy of Data: QAnon, Social Media, and Information Visualization,” Social Media + Society 7, no. 3 (2021): 1.
318 “By researching the breadcrumbs”: Hannah, “Conspiracy of Data,” 3.
319 “The fiery journalist Jean-Paul Marat”: Nicole Bauer, “Skeletons in the Dungeon: Conspiracy Theory, Nationalism, and the French Revolution,” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 9, 2023.
320 TMZ reported on past Instagram posts: “Travis Scott Has History of Promoting Violence, Injury at Shows,” TMZ, Nov. 10, 2021.
320 In 2017, Scott had pleaded guilty: “Travis Scott Pleads Guilty to Disorderly Conduct After Allegedly Inciting a Riot,” Billboard, Feb. 7, 2018.
320 “Everything that Travis Scott has done”: Katie Smith, “Scott Says He Didn’t Hear Crowd’s Screams at Fatal Concert,” NewsNation, Dec. 9, 2021.
320 partnered with the phone therapy app: “BetterHelp and Travis Scott Provide Support in the Wake of the Astroworld Tragedy,” BetterHelp, accessed June 27, 2025.
320 “She was committing all kinds”: Weber, interview by author.
321 “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved”: Brian Naylor, “Read Trump’s Jan. 6 Speech, a Key Part of Impeachment Trial,” NPR, Feb. 10, 2021.
321 “they hoped to find Vice President”: Naylor, “Read Trump’s Jan. 6 Speech.”
321 In total, nearly $3 million: Bill Chappell, “Architect of the Capitol Outlines $30 Million in Damages from Pro-Trump Riot,” NPR, Feb. 24, 2021.
321 five people died: Robert Farley, “How Many Died as a Result of Capitol Riot?,” FactCheck.org, Nov. 1, 2021.
321 “said he opposes Trump”: Patrick Marley, “Did Trump Commit Insurrection on Jan. 6? The Supreme Court Could Decide,” Washington Post, Feb. 2, 2024.
321 A Pew Research study: John Gramlich, “A Look Back at Americans’ Reactions to the Jan. 6 Riot at the U.S. Capitol,” Pew Research Center, Jan. 4, 2022.
321 As time went on, another survey: Bradley Jones, “Fewer Americans Now Say Trump Bears a Lot of Responsibility for the Jan. 6 Riot,” Pew Research Center, Feb. 8, 2022.
321 A 1988 article: Richard Bernstein, “The French Revolution: Right or Wrong?,” New York Times, July 10, 1988.
322 “Travis Scott’s two shows”: Lauren Cochrane, “I’m with the Brand! How Merch Saved the Music Industry,” Guardian, Oct. 21, 2022.
323 “I’m Kim Kardashian”: Dea Hoxha, “Kim Kardashian Responds to Criticism over Tanning Bed in Her Office: ‘I Don’t Use It Too Often,’ ” TODAY.com, Jan. 22, 2024.
324 “The streetwear resale site”: Cochrane, “I’m with the Brand!”
324 “Rich people, the most obvious consumers”: Whizy Kim, “The Surprising Reason Luxury Goods Are Booming,” Vox, May 23, 2023.
324 Kanye embarked on a short-lived: Rosalind S. Helderman and Josh Dawsey, “Kanye West’s Presidential Bid Bolstered by Republican Operatives in at Least Five States,” Washington Post, Aug. 9, 2020.
324 “I almost killed my daughter”: Austin Williams, “ ‘I Almost Killed My Daughter’: Kanye West Breaks Down During Abortion Monologue at SC Campaign Event,” FOX 7 Austin, July 20, 2020.
325 Kim Kardashian filed: Catherine Santino, “A Complete Timeline of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s Divorce,” People.com, July 6, 2023.
326 “Although most employees continue”: Musa al-Gharbi, “Introduction to the Symbolic Economy,” Symbolic Capital(ism) (blog), Substack, June 19, 2024.
326 “as traditional engagement models”: “10 Themes That Will Define the Fashion Agenda in 2020,” Business of Fashion, Jan. 2, 2020.
327 “DONDA is a design company”: Osei, “Kanye West Announces Creative Company DONDA.”
327 Kim and the kids were present: Sabrina Park, “Kim Kardashian Showed Up to Kanye West’s ‘Donda’ Party in a Red Rick Owens Jumpsuit,” Harper’s Bazaar, July 23, 2021.
327 with 3.3 million people: Amber Neely, “Apple Music Streaming Record Reportedly Shattered by Kanye’s ‘Donda’ Event,” AppleInsider, July 26, 2021.
327 The second event at the same stadium: Quinci Legardye, “Kim Kardashian Wears a Full-Body Balenciaga Outfit to Kanye’s Second ‘Donda’ Party,” Harper’s Bazaar, Aug. 7, 2021.
327 During the show itself: Tariro Mzezewa, “Kanye West Fans Turn Up at Donda Show ‘to See History Unfold,’ ” New York Times, Aug. 6, 2021.
327 another Apple Music record breaker: Micah Singleton, “Kanye West’s Final ‘Donda’ Event Breaks Apple Music Livestream Record—Again,” Billboard, Aug. 30, 2021.
328 Kanye set up a replica: Mark Braboy, “Five Takeaways from Kanye West’s ‘Donda’ Listening Event at Chicago’s Soldier Field,” Billboard, Aug. 27, 2021.
328 Kim walked its carpet: Leyla Mohammed, “Kim Kardashian West Walked the Met Gala Carpet with a Masked Man Who Replicated a Past Kanye West Look After Changing Her Instagram Icon to Match His,” BuzzFeed News, Sept. 14, 2021.
328 That fall, Kim hosted: “Live from New York,” The Kardashians, April 28, 2022.
329 “the logical way out”: Bernays, Propaganda, 86.
329 Soon thereafter, a photo “leaked”: Diane J. Cho and Skyler Caruso, “Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson’s Relationship Timeline,” People, Oct. 31, 2024.
329 Soon branded “Skete”: Kenan Draughorne, “Kanye West Declares ‘Skete Davidson Dead at 28’ After Breakup with Kim Kardashian,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 8, 2022.
329 “SNL making my wife say”: Lindsay Lowe, “Ye Comments on Kim Kardashian West Divorce: ‘I Want Us to Be Together,’ ” TODAY.com, Nov. 5, 2021.
330 “Hey @Balenciaga”: Meta (@Meta), Twitter, Oct. 29, 2021.
330 founded in 1919: “Balenciaga History: History of the House,” Kering.com, accessed June 27, 2025, www.kering.com/.
330 both wore Balenciaga: Elana Fishman, “Julia Fox Wears Balenciaga, Peekaboo Thong for Kanye West Date,” Page Six, Jan. 5, 2022.
330 “I find it rather unprecedented”: Hannah Banks-Walker, “This TikTok Star Thinks That Kim and Ye’s Divorce Is Basically the New Form of Fashion Advertising,” Grazia, Jan. 7, 2022.
330 the Fenty founder Rihanna: Marc Bain, “How LVMH Helped Make Rihanna a Billionaire,” Quartz, July 20, 2022.
330 Balenciaga’s name and fragrances: Katie Bird, “Coty Signs Licensing Agreement with Balenciaga,” CosmeticsDesign.com, Oct. 12, 2008.
330 the beauty company that owned: Mallika Mitra, “Coty Buys Majority Stake in Kylie Cosmetics, Hoping to Expand the Brand Globally and into New Categories,” CNBC, Nov. 18, 2019.
331 when Kim joined American Horror Story: Cathal Gunning, “American Horror Story Season 12 Improved a Terrible Trend (but I’m Still Worried for Its Future),” ScreenRant, Aug. 21, 2024.
331 when Kylie partnered with Bratz: “Bratz Dolls Begin to Show Their Age,” Los Angeles Business Journal, Sept. 21, 2008.
331 PAPER magazine pointed out: @papermagazine, Instagram, Jan. 5, 2022, www.instagram.com.
331 “It’s an artful approach”: MJ Corey, “Kardashian_Kolloquium Muses on Kanye’s Muses,” PAPER, Jan. 7, 2022.
331 Kanye announced that his Yeezy x Gap line: Christina Binkley, “Balenciaga Joins Yeezy Gap in Latest Kanye West Collab,” Vogue Business, Jan. 7, 2022.
332 Kim stepped out as a Balenciaga partner: Samantha Holender, “Kim Kardashian Is the New Face of Balenciaga: Details,” Us Weekly, Feb. 1, 2022.
332 “ALL OF YOU HATE ME”: Simone, “Kanye Reacts to Balenciaga Employees, Offset, Luka Sabbat, and ‘Other Fake Friend Opps’ ‘Liking’ Supreme Creative Director’s Instagram Post Calling Him Out Over Virgil Abloh Remarks,” Baller Alert, Oct. 7, 2022.
332 Celebrity Deathmatch–style Claymation character: Tomás Mier, “Kanye West Still Isn’t Tired of Attacking Pete Davidson in Animated ‘Eazy’ Video,” Rolling Stone, March 10, 2022.
332 “framing of politics as sport”: Turcotte, Comedy, Cameos, and Campaign Communication.
333 lunch with Hillary and Chelsea Clinton: Dory Jackson, “Kim Kardashian Visits L.A. Coffee Shop with Hillary and Chelsea Clinton,” People.com, Jan. 25, 2022.
333 Kanye in Miami with Jared Kushner: Erica Tempesta, “Jared Kushner and Kanye West Eat Dinner Together at Carbone in Miami,” Mail Online, Jan. 7, 2022.
333 “We live in a world”: Hannah, “Conspiracy of Data,” 1.
333 “Kanye West Civil War”: Rachel Ellenbogen, “Kanye Escalates War with ‘D**khead’ Pete Davidson,” Daily Telegraph, Feb. 13, 2022.
333 Kim and Pete attended the Met Gala: Eileen Reslen, “Pete Davidson Kisses Kim Kardashian on Met Gala 2022 Red Carpet,” Page Six, May 3, 2022.
333 “White Lives Matter” T-shirts: Brenton Blanchet, “Kanye West Wears ‘White Lives Matter’ Shirt at His Yeezy Season 9 Fashion Show in Paris,” People.com, Oct. 3, 2022.
333 “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”: Andrew Limbong, “Twitter Follows Instagram in Restricting Ye’s Account After Antisemitic Posts,” NPR, Oct. 10, 2022.
333 Balenciaga formally severed ties: Jon Blistein, “Balenciaga Officially Cuts Ties with Kanye West,” Rolling Stone, Oct. 21, 2022.
333 stepping out with his new wife: Nika Shakhnazarova, “Kanye West Reportedly Marries Yeezy Designer Bianca Censori,” Page Six, Jan. 13, 2023.
334 “an attempt to explain”: Scott A. Reid, “Conspiracy Theory,” in Britannica, June 4, 2025, www.britannica.com/topic/conspiracy-theory.
334 “mode of cognition”: Will Gosner, “Critical Thinking,” in Britannica, June 7, 2025, www .britannica.com/topic/critical-thinking.
334 “Product placement is now”: Sophie Haigney, “Anatomy of a Product Placement,” New York Times, June 23, 2022.
335 “provide people with simplified answers”: Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Karen M. Douglas, “Conspiracy Theories as Part of History: The Role of Societal Crisis Situations,” Memory Studies 10, no. 3 (2017): 327.
335 “The first spike occurred”: Van Prooijen and Douglas, “Conspiracy Theories as Part of History,” 325.
336 In 2015, Star magazine published: “Black Widows: How the Kardashians Destroyed Their Men,” Star, Nov. 2, 2015.
336 “I’m taking control of my narrative”: C. Vernon Coleman II, “Kanye West Claims He Wasn’t Allowed to Know Where His Daughter’s Birthday Party Was Today,” XXL Mag, Jan. 15, 2022.
337 Eventually, after Travis Scott texted him: Iris Goldsztajn, “Kanye West Said Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott Helped Him Attend Chicago’s Birthday Party After He Claimed He Wasn’t Invited,” Marie Claire, Jan. 17, 2022.
337 “Kanye will always be family”: Erin Jensen, “ ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ Reunion: Khloé Reveals Plastic Surgery, More Bombshells,” USA Today, June 21, 2021.
337 “That would be epic”: Elizabeth Wagmeister, “Kim Kardashian Considered Kanye West as Her ‘SNL’ Musical Guest,” Variety, April 14, 2022.
337 “Even through all of the craziness”: Joelle Goldstein, “Kim Kardashian Breaks Down over Ex Kanye West’s ‘Lies’ That Are ‘Far More Damaging to the Kids’ Than Her Sex Tape,” People.com, May 25, 2023.
338 “Why I Don’t Call Myself a Feminist”: Megan Willett-Wei, “Kim Kardashian Is a Feminist but Refuses to Call Herself One,” Business Insider, Aug. 15, 2016.
338 “If they were a bunch of dudes”: @krismerc and @subwaytakes, “Episode 92: The Kardashians Aren’t THAT Bad,” SubwayTakes, Instagram, Feb. 15, 2024, www.instagram .com.
338 “I don’t think because she takes her clothes off”: Liz Calvario, “Exclusive: Sharon Osbourne Doubles Down on Kim Kardashian Not Being a Feminist: ‘It’s Just My Instinct,’ ” Yahoo Entertainment, Sept. 7, 2017.
338 “It’s a matriarchy”: “Transparent Creator Jill Soloway on Why the Kardashians Are Feminist Heroes,” MSNBC, Dec. 20, 2018.
339 history of studies of conspiracy theories: Daniel Jolley et al., “Sexism and Feminist Conspiracy Beliefs: Hostile Sexism Moderates the Link Between Feminist Conspiracy Beliefs and Rape Myth Acceptance,” Violence Against Women 31, no. 6–7 (2025): 1448, 1449.
339 “evidence that a belief in”: Jolley et al., “Sexism and Feminist Conspiracy Beliefs,” 1462.
339 “You know you can say”: Nellie Bowles, “Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy,” New York Times, May 18, 2018.
340 dressed up as Adam’s self-indulgent wife: “Khloé Kardashian,” TMRW, July 2024.
340 “The serpent . . . saw Eve”: Jospeh Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, ed. Diane K. Osbon (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 29–30.
340 KUWTK devoted a whole episode: “The Kardashian Curse,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, June 12, 2016.
340 “It’s so sexist”: Sonia Horon, “Kim Kardashian and Khloe Hit Back at the Kardashian Curse Theory,” Mail Online, July 13, 2023.
341 “devised the concept of charisma”: Chris Rojek, Celebrity (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), 32.
341 exemplars of the 2020 meme: “They Hate to See a Girlboss Winning,” Know Your Meme, March 25, 2021, knowyourmeme.com.
341 the classically American “worship”: Mark Vernon, “How William James Offended the English Mind,” Guardian, Sept. 23, 2010.
341 Kourtney and Travis were married: Carolyn Twersky Winkler, “Kourtney Kardashian’s Wedding Was a Dolce & Gabbana Content-Fest,” W Magazine, May 23, 2022.
341 Kim accepted the brand’s offer: Christina Binkley, “Kim Kardashian Curates Dolce & Gabbana’s Spring 2023 Collection,” Vogue Business, Sept. 24, 2022.
341 Kourtney’s tears of frustration: Leyla Mohammed, “Kim Made Kourtney Cry After Telling Her That Her Kids Have Complained About Her Behind Her Back,” BuzzFeed News, Sept. 28, 2023.
342 “Fights are our thing”: “Keeping Up with the Kids,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, May 20, 2021.
342 “What is it about yourself”: “Deeper Than Dolce,” The Kardashians, July 6, 2023.
342 jet skiing in Greece: Riley Cardoza, “Lauren Sánchez Goes Jet Skiing with Jeff Bezos and Kim Kardashian in Greece,” Page Six, June 28, 2024.
342 donning a sari in Mumbai: Riley Cardoza, “Inside Anant Ambani’s Three-Day, $600M Wedding Attended by Kim Kardashian,” Page Six, July 12, 2024.
343 “monitoring every day”: Team Fix, “America’s First Family, and Barack Obama,” Washington Post, Jan. 31, 2015.
343 “I wasn’t aware”: David Jackson, “Kardashian Mom Hits Back at Obama,” USA Today, Aug. 13, 2023.
343 In 2013, Scientific American wrote: Sander van der Linden, “Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories,” Scientific American, Sept. 1, 2013.
343 “No one man should have”: Kanye West, “Power,” on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Roc-A-Fella Records, 2010).
343 announcement of its 2023 release: Anthony D’Alessandro, Nancy Tartaglione, and Jill Goldsmith, “ ‘Barbie’ Dolls Up at CinemaCon with a Lot of Pink & Extended Footage; Ryan Gosling on Finding His ‘Ken-Ergy,’ ” Deadline, April 25, 2023.
344 shot the film’s Rollerblading scene: Anna Lazarus Caplan, “Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling Rollerblade in Neon at Venice Beach While Filming Barbie Movie,” People .com, June 28, 2022.
344 later estimates suggested: Ayomikun Adekaiyero, “ ‘Barbie’ Reportedly Had a $150 Million Marketing Budget—More Than the Movie’s Actual Budget,” Business Insider, July 23, 2023.
344 There was a partnership: “Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse, Ken’s Way,” Airbnb Newsroom, June 26, 2023.
344 Balmain released pink-heavy collections: “Balmain x Barbie: Balmain Partners with Barbie for a Special, Limited-Edition Collection,” Balmain, Jan. 2022, us.balmain.com.
344 “If you love Barbie”: Dana Stevens, “Barbie Is a Delight of Improbable Proportions,” Slate, July 19, 2023.
344 “I Hate Elvis” merch: “The Ingenious Way Elvis Presley Even Made Money off His Haters,” CBC Radio, July 9, 2018.
344 “The word ‘hate’ is a tricky word”: Rebecca Rubin, “Inside ‘Barbie’s’ Pink Publicity Machine: How Warner Bros. Pulled Off the Marketing Campaign of the Year,” Variety, July 23, 2023.
345 Barbie was invented by Ruth Handler: Eliana Dockterman, “Who Is Ruth Handler? How Barbie’s Creator Factors Into the Film,” Time, July 21, 2023.
345 “Dolls offer . . . a transcendence”: Otamere Guobadia, “Welcome to the Age of the Doll,” AnOther, Feb. 25, 2022.
345 North American International Toy Fair: Kerry Byrne, “On This Day in History, March 9, 1959, Barbie Makes Fashionable World Debut at New York Toy Fair,” Fox News, March 8, 2023.
345 designed by a former military engineer: Maude Campbell, “Barbie’s Designer Got His Start Making Missiles,” Popular Mechanics, Feb. 7, 2019.
345 Mattel even sponsored: “Mattel to Make Toys for Disney,” New York Times, Oct. 13, 1987.
345 In her first year, Barbie sold: Marie-Claire Chappet, “This Is the Real History of Barbie,” Harper’s Bazaar, July 13, 2023.
346 Mattel reports, 100 Barbies: Michelle Singletary, “How Barbie Primed Us for a Life of Conspicuous Consumption,” Washington Post, July 19, 2023.
346 “Handler deliberately made Barbie’s face”: Dawn Heinecken, “Barbie,” in Hall and Hall, American Icons, 52.
346 “provides an embodied site”: Heinecken, “Barbie,” 54.
346 its stake in the “dream gap”: “Barbie Celebrates 5th Anniversary of the Barbie Dream Gap Project by Donating Dolls for Global Auction and Hosting Inspirational Programming,” Mattel, Oct. 11, 2023.
346 Barbie bought her Dreamhouse: Anna Kodé and Tony Cenicola, “Barbie, Her House, and the American Dream,” New York Times, June 23, 2023.
346 she was sent to the moon in 1965: Jenna Bertschi, “Barbie: An Astronaut for the Ages,” National Air and Space Museum, July 18, 2023.
346 the first Black Barbie: Gregory Wakeman, “How the First Black Barbie Was Born,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 21, 2024.
346 a range of Barbies: Eliana Dockterman, “Barbie’s Got a New Body,” Time, Jan. 28, 2016.
346 “They kept her in tune”: Sophie Caldwell, “One of Barbie’s First Designers Walks Us Through Her Evolution, 1959 to Today,” TODAY.com, July 19, 2023.
346 “Although Barbie has been criticized”: Heinecken, “Barbie,” 54.
347 “American Dream” issue: Ernesto Macias, “Kim Kardashian Bares All,” Interview, Sept. 6, 2022.
347 Terry Richardson for Rolling Stone in 2015: “Kim Kardashian Gets Real: 11 Key Quotes from the Cover Story,” Rolling Stone, July 1, 2015.
347 “legacy of Blackfishing and appropriation”: Cady Lang, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians Is Ending. But Their Exploitation of Black Women’s Aesthetics Continues,” Time, June 10, 2021.
348 “reduces humans to mere operators”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 19.
348 “Who decides what the system talks about”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 23.
348 “any serious analysis of the system”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 21.
348 “profit maximization”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 31.
348 “The birth of the United States”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 28.
349 “The second constitutive moment”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 29.
349 “best model for the media”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 29.
349 there were only three channels: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 30.
349 “emphasize their originality”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 32.
349 “demand creates its own supply”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 1.
350 “radicalize influencers”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 38.
350 “whirlpool”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 67.
350 “people adopt new beliefs”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 14.
350 “each of the Unaffiliated channels”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 56.
350 “audiences’ growing awareness”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 57.
350 “It requires incredible willpower”: Munger, YouTube Apparatus, 72.
351 Josh Goldstine admitted: Rubin, “Inside ‘Barbie’s’ Pink Publicity Machine.”
351 “What do you guys wanna see”: Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian), Twitter, Nov. 24, 2022, x.com/KimKardashian/status/1595646777570430977.
351 “I just think we have huge influence”: “Feel, Deal, Heal,” The Kardashians, July 20, 2023.
352 The moment was reported on: Pop Base (@PopBase), “Kylie Jenner cries over online comments regarding her appearance: ‘It’s a miracle that I still have confidence and I can still look in the mirror and think that I am pretty,’ ” X, June 20, 2024.
352 Kim spoke about her then-boyfriend: “Never Go Against the Family,” The Kardashians, June 2, 2022.
352 inspiring TMZ podcasts: “Pete Davidson Drops Out of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Space Flight,” TMZ, March 17, 2022.
352 When Kim recycled the news: Maria Pasquini, “Kim Kardashian Says She Felt ‘Bad’ Pete Davidson Couldn’t Go to Space due to ‘Scheduling Conflicts,’ ” People.com, Oct. 13, 2022.
353 she replied, “free everyone”: “Kim Kardashian Says ‘Free Everybody’ During Pro-Palestine Outburst,” TMZ, May 8, 2024.
354 in 1969, when the moon landing: Katie Campione, “25 Most-Watched TV Programs of All Time: Moon Landing, Super Bowls & More,” Deadline, Feb. 9, 2024.
354 Kim’s ill-fated wedding: “10.5M Watched Kim Kardashian’s Wedding,” TODAY.com, Oct. 11, 2011.
355 “Within the monoculture obsession”: Kyle Chayka, “Does Monoculture Still Exist on the Internet?,” Vox, Dec. 17, 2019.
355 The numbers can back this up: Nancy Tartaglione, “ ‘Barbie’ an Even Bigger Knockout with $356M+ Global Bow, ‘Oppenheimer’ Increases Genius to $180M+ WW Launch—International Box Office Actuals Update,” Deadline, July 24, 2023.
355 “According to Durkheim”: Dan Krier, “Durkheim and Social Integration,” Social Sciences LibreTexts, July 26, 2018.
356 “synchronous attention with others”: Garriy Shteynberg, “A ‘Collective Mind’ Could Bridge Societal Divides,” Discover, Jan. 24, 2024.
356 “To be in a packed house”: Chayka, “Does Monoculture Still Exist on the Internet?”
356 In the case of Barbenheimer: Nicolas Vega, “AMC Has Sold 20,000 ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ Double Feature Tickets,” CNBC, July 10, 2023.
357 “moral remembrance”: Taha Yasseri, Patrick Gildersleve, and Lea David, “Collective Memory in the Digital Age,” Progress in Brain Research 274, no. 1 (2022): 209.
358 “rapid growth of memorialization”: Yasseri, Gildersleve, and David, “Collective Memory in the Digital Age,” 207.
358 “grounded in the presumption”: Yasseri, Gildersleve, and David, “Collective Memory in the Digital Age,” 209.
358 “Moral remembrance points to”: Yasseri, Gildersleve, and David, “Collective Memory in the Digital Age,” 209.
358 thirty thousand pieces of her past: Margaret Abrams, “Inside Kim Kardashian’s 30,000-Piece Fashion Archive,” Page Six, May 26, 2022.
358 scooping up artifacts: Matthew Velasco, “Inside Kim Kardashian’s Museum-Level Celebrity Fashion Archive,” W Magazine, Nov. 3, 2024.
359 “the commencement” and “the commandment”: Jacques Derrida, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” trans. Eric Prenowitz, Diacritics 25, no. 2 (1995): 9.
359 “We have practically our entire childhoods”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 16.
359 Kim’s sisters surprised her: Emily Gulla, “Kim Kardashian Recreated All of Her Old Birthday Parties for Her 40th and It Was Epic,” Cosmopolitan, Oct. 24, 2020.
359 “The archivization,” Derrida writes: Derrida, “Archive Fever,” 17.
359 “All of our memories live here”: @kimkardashian, “Kim Kardashian on Instagram: ‘Today We Celebrate My Mom,’ ” Instagram, Nov. 6, 2019, www.instagram.com/.
360 “an irrepressible desire to return”: Derrida, “Archive Fever,” 57.
360 “There is no archive”: Derrida, “Archive Fever,” 14.
360 the time capsule they all buried: “The End Part 2,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, June 10, 2021.
361 Derrida adds that the “arkheion”: Derrida, “Archive Fever,” 9.
362 “In the ceaseless work”: WXS, “From My Archives: Derrida’s Archive Fever,” Walker Sampson (blog), April 10, 2011.
363 “compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic”: Derrida, “Archive Fever,” 57.
363 “It’s fun,” they write: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 16.
363 “Look at you! You’re forty”: Alex Heigl, “Kanye West Gives Kim Kardashian a Hologram of Her Dad for Her Birthday,” Page Six, Oct. 30, 2020.
364 Daniel Reynolds told Slate: Heather Schwedel, “Robert Kardashian Hologram Explained: How Kayne’s Birthday Gift for Kim Was Created, and What It Cost,” Slate, Oct. 31, 2020.
364 “visual effects, machine learning”: Schwedel, “Robert Kardashian Hologram Explained.”
364 “the unpleasant feeling”: Cambridge Dictionary, “uncanny valley,” accessed July 9, 2025, dictionary.cambridge.org.
364 “One of the functions of art”: Gabler, Life the Movie, 58.
364 “Arabic stories, and The Arabian Nights”: Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?,” Screen 20, no. 1 (1979): 301.
365 In 2012, although their dad: Allison Corneau, “Kris Jenner ‘Test Drives’ a Casket When Planning Her Funeral,” Us Weekly, Aug. 20, 2012.
365 Khloé invites a medium over: Jennifer Fletcher, “Khloe Kardashian Believes Her Dead Dad Is Haunting Her House!,” Yahoo Life, Nov. 23, 2015.
365 she and Kim, dressed in their baddie-wear: “New Friends and the Bunker,” Keeping Up with the Kardashians, April 8, 2021.
365 “Death is the sanction of everything”: Benjamin quoted in Brooks, Seduced by Story, 72.
365 “Benjamin reaches back to this tradition”: Brooks, Seduced by Story, 75.
366 “Baudrillard has already suggested”: Meštrović, Postemotional Society, 127.
366 “When we were little”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 81.
367 “It is the only object”: Baudrillard, America, 35.
367 GQ crowned Kim “Man of the Year”: Sean Manning, “What Kim Kardashian Learned from Her Father,” GQ, Nov. 14, 2023.
368 “full-scale authentic copy”: Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 6.
368 “One of the most difficult”: Lida Papakonstantinou, “Use of Artificial Intelligence and Holography,” in Jones, Burton, and Brien, Kardashians.
368 In her 1985 work: Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 2013), 150, 151.
370 “One of the things that was hashed”: Jacobson, interview by author, June 5, 2023.
370 “Keeping up with the Kardashians”: Catherine Bennett, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians Means Paying Other Women to Have Your Babies,” Guardian, Jan. 6, 2019.
372 “When Kourtney and I were called”: Kardashian et al., Kardashian Konfidential, 85.
372 “A lot of actors and musicians”: Schwedel, “Robert Kardashian Hologram Explained.”