Kim Kardashian - good for women's body image or not?

[CheersMedea]

Look at this picture of Kim Kardashian:

www.mailonsunday.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2839141/Lady-latex-Kim-Kardashian-squeezes-famous-figure-pink-PVC-dress-launch-perfume-Melbourne.html

I can't make up my mind whether:

1. she looks good and we are over conditioned to seeing thin women.
2. she looks fat but over comes that to look good because of her self-confidence in her body.
3. she looks fat, dresses like a chav and does not look good.

Maybe fat isn't the right word - excessively broad in the beam?

Anyway - is it a good thing for women's body image for her to be pictured in the media so much or a bad thing?

Does she look good or not? I fluctuate between the two and can't make up my mind.

The Tina Fey quote does really sum it up beautifully.

body image aside, she's all about one trait for me and that is vanity.

I hate that it makes people say things like this -
arms and legs not fugly skinny like the horrible model look, but not overweight either

I don't get where she's fat. She has a beautiful womenly shapely figure.
It seems a women cannot have boobs and hips without being called fat.
Small wonder so many youngsters have eating disorders.
I don't like the dress though

well, as that was my post that was hated - we are being ultra-trivial and being asked if the woman is fat. She isn't, nor is she skinny. She's normal and looks good.

the half-dead model look is ugly. And unhealthy. Normal people with access to decent food should not be down to the bone. It is abusive of a healthy body.

or she would in a better outfit.

oops: KK would 'look good in a better outfit'

When was the last time you saw a half dead looking model?

Some people are naturally very thin. I was before I had a child.

I find what you are saying fairly offensive.

'Normal' - as opposed to abnormal skinny women?

I have worked in an active job with quite a few slim people. There is a BIG difference between how they looked and what I see if I mistakenly turn to the fashion page of the Saturday Times magazine.

KK has normal non-fat limbs. My colleagues (20-ish) were slimmer than that but still healthy.

legs that go in above the knees, twig like arms - that's ill, not pretty.

to be fair the Times may be using the really sick ones, because I've just done a bit of googling and most of the snaps do show slim but normal women who don't make you wince. Random example:

wallpaper-s.org/78__Morena_Corwin,_Fashion_Model.htm#.VGyTFckrOvM

we need to see more like her. Perhaps I need to stop buying the Times!

Can you stop saying 'normal'. It's irritating at best.

the objectification of women - particularly the black woman stereotype - because thats who she is aiming to emulate despite it not being mentioned anywhere much - repulses me. Her oiled silicone butt doesn't even look real..I only caught a glimpse of the pic and that was enough for me. The media love this "role model" term in reality, I don't think so many people view these "celebs" as such at all..so Im not thinking women are going to rush out en-masse to get that look soon. Thankfully.

She has a tiny dainty frame and she carries her boobs and bum well. Very beautiful woman.

I don't think she is good for women's body image because she's constantly striving to be something she's not (body-wise) - she has no doubt had some surgery/ procedures to change her shape and face, she wears spanx and constricting corsets to change her shape etc. as if she's not happy with what she has and needs to fit an image she has of what she should be like IYSWIM.

Also she does not dress to suit her shape at all and I dislike the way every outfit has to accentuate boobs or arse. When she was pregnant I just wished she'd put on some comfortable clothes and flat shoes and enjoy her pregnancy rather than suffer for her 'image'.

She is beautiful and i myself are a fan but....she shouldnt have photoshoped. If you want to so this and i do think its great for woman as it encouraged them to keep themselves inshape but she should of gone natural.

I see her as a vacuous freak show of sorts: child toted around as a toy, named North West (seriously what is that about), fame and money obsessed. It's pretty sad.

'She is beautiful and i myself are a fan...'

A fan of what exactly, her tupperware tits and arse, her sausage casing wardrobe, her sex tape?

I don't know any women who would get in shape to look like KK. Well not unless they had her bank balance, surgeon and warped sense of what is appropriate and healthy.

I do think she is very beautiful but I pity her lack of substance. I appreciate that she may be different off camera of course, but the self she presents to the media is shallow and vacuous.

I don't know her name but a younger Kardashian sister keeps appearing in magazines and media I see at work. Again a very beautiful young girl fed to the lions.

Sofacanary

Her show maybe? Why do people hate? They hate because they are jelous. You would have nothing to say if it was a page 3 model with no name.

I'm with Gone Girl and Sofa.

I would have loved her to be famous about 30 years ago when I was a young teen with a teeny waist and big bum and short legs just like KK. Although I hadn't had a boob job and had normal rather than vast boobs. I think it would have given me huge confidence to see that you didn't have to be 5 foot ten, skinny and blonde to be attractive - you could be short, dark-haired and have a big bum and that was sexy too! I honestly had no idea anyone would go for my type!

So although I don't like the fake tits and the nudity and selling sex, the fact that 'officially' sexy women come in all different shapes, sizes and colours now is fantastic.

And by the way, my waist to hip ratio was v similar until I had kids - don't think you need implants to get a big bum!

I don't think the existence of her body is good or bad or anything to women. It's just her body. It is different to the majority or celebrators bodies but I'm not sure what impact that could have on anything.
I doubt she is overweight so objectively is not fat. Doesn't really matter though. She can weigh what she likes. Looking fat doesn't mean looking bad as you have implied.

What an unfortunate dress. Why does she need to have everything hanging out all the time? Think she has set the image of women back a bit with the whole sex tape to fame thing, which is a shame because she does seem nice, if a bit vapid and shallow.

Why does she need to have everything hanging out all the time?

Exactly.

I don't see how she can remotely be considered a good role model for young women, or anything of the sort, when her whole self-presentation is about her surgically-enhanced bum and boobs. The amount of breast on display in that dress is obscene.

It's still about a body type that is only obtainable by extreme measures. In the past, it was starving yourself to get the anorexic-junkie look. Now, it's apparently about paying someone to implant foreign material in your body to attain comic-book proportions. None of it is healthy or natural.

And men might 'fancy the pants off her', as in 'want to shag her', but they probably fancy the pants off porn stars as well. Doesn't mean they think it's an attractive everyday look that they would like their partners to aspire to. Most men I know would refuse to walk out the door with their partner if she was dressed like that!

That anyone can say KK has done something positive for women is laughable?

Want to become stratospherically famous? Well, all you have to do is make a sex tape, sell your private life to the highest bidder, marry a series of dickheads and surgically enhance your body until you become a grotesque caricature of the female form. Talent, wit and personality not required. Narcissism essential.

I read somewhere she took over 1000 selfies in a day or something? Well, there's no interest like self interest. Also, do we really believe she is not ashamed of her body? In my experience people who are proud of their natural form do not seek to surgically enhance it every five minutes.

And if there genuinely are young women out there who aspire to be like her then I despair for the future of humanity.

As previous posters have said, her body is just as unattainable as the very thin models out there. She could have been, if not a good role model, a good example of a beautiful, naturally curvy woman in the media, as she was five years ago or so. She is not that anymore and I wonder where it will end.

That Tina Fey quote really is brilliant.