Considering Variety’s feature article on the Kardashian-Jenners’ latest reality TV foray on Hulu uses the pull quote, “Money Always Matters” in it, maybe it should have been no great surprise that Kim or one of her sistren would say something tone deaf about how capitalism works. Of course, in their minds, the “secret,” “underlying” tenets of capitalism that dictate if you’re born wealthy, you’ll stay wealthy and if you’re born, poor you’ll stay poor don’t apply. No, they “genuinely” believe, as George W. Bush once said, “capitalism is the best system ever devised.” Declared, mind you, right after the collapse of the entire global financial system in 2008.
Sure, it’s the “best” system… when you’re at the top of the labor chain from the outset. And, despite her congenital “boss” status, Kim seems to genuinely believe that, “We see the hard work that goes into each [sister’s] business.” Even if that hard work is not exactly all their own, so much as the low-wage earners who help people like Kardashian and her new bestie, Jeff Bezos, build their empires. Which is why one former employee of the cabal’s was quick to respond on social media to Kim’s “hot take” on how to become successful. The employee, Jessica DeFino, rehashed, “I was an editor on the Kardashian apps in 2015 in LA, worked days, nights and weekends, could only afford groceries from the 99 Cents Only Store, called out ‘sick’ more than once because I couldn’t put gas in my car to get to the office.” So yeah, it’s easy to get richer when you don’t pay people well, not just for their labor, but the sacrifice of their time. Something that the Kardashian-Jenners themselves believe is worth millions (but only if it’s them doing it) as they open up their (im)personal lives (read: sacrifice their time) regularly for the cameras. As for the Kardashian-Jenner projection of loving “the hustle” (made much less hustle-oriented when there’s plenty of hours in the schedule for relaxing spa treatments and jet-setting trips in between), it seems they don’t like when the help does it as DeFino also noted that she was “reprimanded for freelancing on the side” during her stint as a Kardashian app employee.
While those still deluded enough to defend the Kardashians would say that they do work hard for what they have, any of that “hard work” pales in comparison to the average person who didn’t win the birth lottery. And yes, you have to keep working hard in order to sustain a business, but if you never had to work that hard to get it in the first place, it makes one’s stamina much more enduring once the business is actually quite effortlessly started.
There’s nothing “wrong,” per se, with the Kardashians’ success (apart from the glaringly overt reasons, chiefly: how capitalism favors the rich). The wrongness of this entire blip in meme-worthy soundbites is that Kim has no place lecturing people, least of all women, on how they can “boss up.” Because, along with mansplaining, what’s just as vexing is richsplaining a.k.a. “when a person who hasn’t experienced poverty gives you patronizing advice on how to get out of poverty.” This isn’t the first (and will hardly be the last) instance of the Kardashian-Jenners’ out-of-touchness with “the commoner” coming back to bite them in the ass. There was Kim’s boast about North’s Friesian horses at the height of racial unrest in 2020 and then her claim of just wanting to feel “normal for a brief moment in time” by going to a private island that same traumatic (for plebes) year. Before that, her sister, Kylie, received a river of shit when Forbes named her the youngest “self-made” billionaire. Again, it’s easy to be “self-made” when you’re born with the capital to become such.
The same Variety profile found Kim saying of the inevitable backlash about her “work ethic philosophy,” “Who gives a fuck? We focus on the positive. We work our asses off. If that’s what you think, then sorry. We just don’t have the energy for that. We don’t have to sing or dance or act; we get to live our lives—and hey, we made it. I don’t know what to tell you.” But apparently, she does know what to tell us. And that’s some one-sentence cliché about “how to make it in America”: “Get your fuckin’ ass up and work.” Gee, thanks for the tip. But what about when literally no one will hire you or the job that you do get your fuckin’ ass up for can barely pay the bills? Where’s the solution for that in Kardashian’s “foolproof” advice for how to “work capitalism”? There’s often the ultimately one-in-a-million story of someone born into poverty or, at best, a middle-class background that gets held up as a beacon of why capitalism is “the greatest”—part and parcel of the American dream narrative about how you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you just “keep trying,” “never give up,” etc. Madonna’s journey is one such fable, with the lore going that she came to New York with nothing more than thirty-five dollars in her pocket and, four years later, got a hard-won record deal with Sire. The Cinderella story of something like that plays into the harshness of what Madonna’s rich bitch character, Amber Leighton, in Swept Away believes about “tenacity.”
During a scene that gets almost as political as Lina Wertmüller’s original film (thanks to M’s ex, Guy Ritchie), Amber snaps, “Don’t give me that white liberal shit. It’s the nature of capitalism. It’s more successful than communism. You don’t see people emigrating to Cuba.” When one of her “friends” on the yacht plays devil’s advocate by chiming in, “There are problems raised by capitalism,” she demands, “What problems?” He replies, “Your old man’s the boss of a pharmaceutical company. He’s got to make a profit to keep the shareholders happy. That’s not in the public’s best interest.” Amber retorts, “Then they don’t have to buy.” He tries to appeal to something in her humanity by supposing, “Imagine that there’s a drug that can cure a certain kind of blindness. Even though it costs nothing to make it, they still put a high price on the drug. Capitalism. So if you can’t afford the drug, you’ll stay blind.” She balks, “Without the drug companies, they’d stay blind. What’s to stop them getting a job and buying the drug?” He looks at her, perplexed, and reminds, “They’re blind.” Amber asks, “So what?” He explains, “Limits their employment opportunities.” She shrugs, “They can bake cakes. You don’t need eyes to bake cakes.”
Amber then concludes, as the Kardashians might, “The laws of capitalism are: the proprietor of goods can set any price he sees fit and shall not be at the mercy of any moral or ethical issues.” Later, the poor fisherman, Giuseppe (Adriano Giannini), working on the yacht will parrot her words back to her when they get stranded on an island together. That, along with, “Why don’t you bake a cake?” For actually being faced with the realities of privilege being rendered null makes “success” an entirely different, unwinnable ball game. And, obviously, when one already has scores of cash to begin with, they can afford to be choosy about the work they will do. Which is why Khloé Kardashian also weighed in with, “…we’re pretty brutal, me and my sisters, with what we will settle for or not settle for. But not all money is good money. It has to be a good fit…” Would that everyone could have the luxury to say such things as they live hand to mouth, taking whatever they can. Whether “good” or “bad” money (even though all money is ultimately stained in blood).
In the same video interview Variety provided, Kim concludes, “If you put in the work, you will see results. It’s that simple.” Well, yeah. You’ll certainly see results when you’re born into a world of affluence that opens you up to the right social climbing connections. The way Kim translated a “friendship” (read: being a closet organizer) with Paris Hilton (who once proudly said on The Simple Life, “I never had a job”) into her own separate “reality”-based fame. But for those who were born “ordinary,” getting your “fuckin’ ass up” and working will yield few results beyond barely keeping your head above water. And even those, like Anna Delvey, who try to game the rigged system will always end up being cut down to size. Specifically, the one-size-fits-all potato sack designed for the peasants to keep toiling in while the rich prattle on about how “simple” it is to win at capitalism. It’s just, like, trickle-down economics, or whatever.
