In news that will shock absolutely no one, Khloé Kardashian has posted a series of slightly bizarre bikini pictures on Instagram. Wearing a cherry print bikini with trainers (which in itself feels like a minor public offence), the 40-year-old posed with her children, 7-year-old True Thompson and 2-year-old Tatum Thompson.
The desired reaction, we can assume, isn't to examine whether it's socially acceptable to wear a bikini with trainers in public, but to marvel at Khloé's remarkably sculpted physique. “Her adductor muscles are so strong she could crush a thousand angry men between her thighs!”; “Her abs are so toned she must be in a perpetual state of crunch, doomed to contract her core for the rest of eternity!”, were among my initial thoughts.
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But because Khloé's Instagram reaches hundreds of millions of people – a substantial sample size of humanity, which consists largely of terrible people – not all of the comments were quite so complimentary. You don't have to scroll for long to find a whole litany of derogatory remarks about her body, from calling her too thin, providing unsolicited advice about gaining weight, and asserting that she's using Ozempic.
Whether Khloé is taking weight loss medication – something she vehemently denies – is neither relevant nor remotely interesting (guess what? Most famous people are). What did interest me is how readily we verbally destroy a woman for having a body that looks a certain way, and specifically, how this woman has endured such public destruction for pretty much her entire adult life.
Khloé has been open about the relentless fat-shaming she endured when she was younger, before famously losing over 40lbs. On an episode of The Kardashians in July 2023, Khloé remarked: “I've been torn apart the minute that I've gone on TV. I didn't look like my sisters, so therefore, it's not good enough… Then when I started changing my look – you get better makeup, you do fillers, you do whatever, I had a nose job – and there's still people constantly bullying you."
Interestingly internalising this fatphobia, she added: “I had the most confidence [when I was younger]. I was chubby, in a skintight dress, you couldn't tell me otherwise. Society gave me insecurities.”
Women are overdosing on Ozempic and celebrities are peddling diet pills like it's 2001.
Look, I get it. The Kardashians have made an almost inconceivable fortune profiting from and perpetuating harmful beauty standards. Kourtney sells weight loss gummies, Kim basically owns shapewear, and Khloé had a whole damn TV series called Revenge Body. You can't tell me that Kim's silhouette isn't partly responsible for the rise in women seeking often dangerous BBL surgery, and would we all have had our lips done if Kylie's aggressively plump pout wasn't protruding through our screens for the last decade?
These impossibly-waisted women gave a global masterclass in how not to FaceTune your photos, promoted all manner of appetite suppressants, and have advocated crash-dieting so often over the years that, without taking a moment to think critically, it almost sounds normal. And remember that time Kim thanked Khloé for saying she looked anorexic?
Yes, they made their bodies our business. But you shouldn't have to like the Kardashians or even give two shits about them to know that a woman being attacked for the way she looks over the course of several decades is, morally, pretty reprehensible. No one deserves to be body-shamed, not even a Kardashian. And as long as we think it's okay to comment on a famous woman's body, we'll think it's okay to comment on any woman's body. Even if you're an objectively shitty person, we all know that in 2025, that's not okay.
Besides, blaming a group of powerful women for the pressures women face is exactly what a patriarchal and capitalist system wants. I'm not saying you shouldn't be angry at the Kardashians for perpetuating toxic beauty standards, but if you're not also directing your anger at the oppressive systems that created them, then your anger is misplaced. The Kardashians didn't create the beauty ideal, they just earned enough money to be able to achieve it. Like the rest of the celebrity elite, they simply have the finances and resources to look the way they do.
It's a classist, misogynistic system designed to keep every woman down, and trick you into thinking that the way you look is the most interesting thing about you, or that the size of Khloé Kardashian's body is the most interesting thing about her.
So, yes, Khloé Kardashian has lost a whole small child's worth of weight and isn't afraid to show the world. If you have anything negative to say about that, try and keep it to yourself. For all our sakes.
