With the unveiling of Kylie Jenner’s first Halloween costume of the “season,” a certain pattern of the Kardashian-Jenner juggernaut has been encapsulated. That is to say, glomming onto actual talent and the bona fide icon status that comes with it. With Jenner in the role of Madonna and her latest best friend stand-in for Jordyn Woods/fellow “influencer” and plastic surgery proponent Anastasia “Stassie” Karanikolaou in the role of Britney Spears, the two re-created the seminal VMA kiss seen ‘round the world. Dancing in a writhing fashion to “Like A Virgin,” the two did their best to choreograph themselves in the same way as Britney and Madonna, leaving it primarily to the kiss to embody the iconography. For “shtick” should be the joint last name of both the Kardashians and the Jenners.
Incidentally, it was Kim who commenced the dressing as Madonna and [insert other pop icon here] trend back in 2017, when she appeared as M in her 1991 Academy Awards gown (itself an homage to Marilyn Monroe). Which meant that left the less glamorous part to Kourtney Kardashian, offering herself up for the part of Michael Jackson (since everyone in Hollywood would still prefer to ignore that he was a raging pedo). This seemed to be a patent jealous reaction to one-upping Kylie’s fawned over 2016 costume: Christina Aguilera in the “Dirrty” video (who, incidentally, was also onstage with Madonna and Britney in 2003, in case anyone cares to remember). Yet tracking the trajectory of Kim’s Halloween costumes over the years is a surefire sign of how her opinion of herself has augmented. For in the germinal phase of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, circa 2008, Kim saw fit to dress up in something as banal as a flapper ensemble or, in 2010, as a cheetah.
It was in 2011, appearing as Poison Ivy, that the tipping point seemed to occur. It was then that she amplified her game and began to start dressing as actual personae that required a more highly elaborate amount of preparation (we won’t count a stint as Wonder Woman in 2010)–and, of course, money. For part of the entire reason for the display the Kardashian-Jenners like to make on Halloween is to showcase wealth, therefore status, as the best costumes are always a study in monetary expenditures. Something Paris Hilton was, yet again, doing long before she accidentally spawned the monster that became Kim (even Paris dressed as Madonna from the 1984 VMAs in 2014 before it seemed to occur to Kim or Kylie to take on one of M’s many Halloween-inspiring incarnations).
It was 2014 that found Kim dispensing with the Marvel and DC universe for persona inspo and going straight for icons grounded in reality, choosing to dress as Anna Wintour. It bears noting that 2014 was also the year she married Kanye West, cementing, in her mind, some sort of ultimate ascent to power by way of perpetually leeching onto people with a real skill. One that launched them to a more legitimate form of fame than the kind she has manufactured for herself and the rest of her vampiric family (the head vampire of which is Kris Jenner–stake her, and you’ll stake them all).
As 2017 dawned, and with it, Kim’s newfound inflation of her ego thanks to launching her own beauty line, KKW, it seemed the Halloween of that year was a reflection of how she saw herself as being classifiable among the ranks of actual icons, dressing as Madonna and MJ one night, Selena another (though she looked more like J. Lo as Selena) and Cher the next. In 2018, becoming involved in “social justice” by way of bending Trump’s melting ear to release Alice Johnson didn’t seem to prompt her to want to dress as a more staid woman of history, instead opting for Pam Anderson’s trash-tastic 1999 VMAs look, immortalized by a giant pink marabou hat. Arguably the closest she’s ever gotten to accurately seeing herself.
As for Kylie in 2018, she topped her sister once more as a life-size Barbie inside the box. Which is exactly how all the Kardashian-Jenners think, likely why they must turn instead to their favorite time of year, Halloween, to feel slightly more avant-garde. Even if the flaccid, “tee-hee-hee, we’re so bad” peck shared between “Stassie” and Kylie as Britney and Madonna is a perfect example of how no matter how hard they glom onto the earned stardom of others, the result will always be palpably ersatz.
