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When Kim Kardashian hit the 2022 Met Gala carpet in Marilyn Monroe's “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” dress, people had A LOT of feelings. Some were thrilled to see the star in the iconic dress, while others were horrified that she'd wear such a delicate and significant garment. But perhaps the part of the outfit that caused the most backlash was the intense diet she went on to fit into it.
“Two weeks before [the Met Gala], I was 10 pounds down and I was so proud of myself,” she told Allure for their August 2022 cover story. “Then I got down 15 [pounds] and it fit. I couldn’t believe it.” Kardashian stressed that she was under the supervision of a nutritionist and trainer, promising she wasn't “starving and doing it really unhealthy.” Even so, her diet, she said, caused a painful psoriasis flareup.
Critics lobbed many accusations at Kardashian, saying she was yet again promoting unrealistic body standards by changing her body to conform to a dress (“There are so many things out there that are so not accurate and not true," she said) And at the Met Gala 2024, the star returned to the carpet in a corset so tight that she seemed barely able to breathe, yet again, emphasising unrealistic and potentially harmful body ideals.
“I got psoriatic arthritis, so I couldn’t really move my hands.”
Kardashian wore Maison Margiela couture with an extremely tight corset, her waist squeezed to tiny proportions. But unlike the immediate backlash to her diet comments for her Marilyn look, early reactions online seem to praise Kardashian for being tiny — yet another marker of how we've regressed to early-aughts body norms in the Ozempic era, tying thinness to beauty and worth. We've seemingly become more aware that our bodies are both inherently personal and political, that what we look like is both an intensely private choice, and a statement about ourselves and the world around us. And Kardashian does look incredible; in fact, she looks unreal — and that's the problem.
While Kardashian stressed that she achieved her 2022 Met Gala weight loss through apparently health methods, and while it's not clear that she did any dieting for this year's look, what is clear is that Kardashian continues to morph her body into increasingly unrealistic shapes, ones that can't be achieved without extensive intervention — whether that's through an intense diet guided by professionals, or an extreme corset in which it looks as if she can't breathe or move freely.
It's Kardashian's purview to do whatever she wants with her body, but it's also undeniable that she and her sisters have shaped bodily norms over the last decade (for good or for bad). That's particularly concerning now that Ozempic is becoming more and more popular, and that potentially unsafe Ozempic “dupes” are becoming increasingly available and desired. While celebrities like Kardashian might have unlimited access to trainers, nutritionists, and medical doctors, the young people who want to achieve their look might turn to unsafe means.
This is, of course, a tough line to toe. Kim Kardashian should be allowed full bodily autonomy, which means that she should be able to look and dress however she wants. We should not look to celebrities to tell us how our bodies should look, or to set the bar on what's beautiful. But, like the expectation that many have for our own bodies, that too is unrealistic. In a world in which celebrities do influence how people, especially young people, want to look, it's well worth examining the message an appearance like Kardashian's at the Met sends. Right now, the message seems to be written across her waist.
This feature originally appeared on Teen Vogue.
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