The Research and Facts

My Gender and Media Capstone projected is inspired by the Kardashian family, specifically, their impact on the beauty standard through the use of social media. My goal for this project is not to blame the Kardashian’s for the ever-changing beauty standard, but to highlight the way their use of social media has influenced society to desire a certain look and body type that for most, is naturally unattainable. I wanted to bring an awareness to just how harmful social media has proven to be on mental health, especially  on those who are young adults and teenagers. Since the 2010s, the use of social media has skyrocketed due to the creation of applications like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook. Unfortunately, the rise in social media use has also come hand-in-hand with a rise in photo editing as individuals turn to apps like Photoshop or Facetune to airbrush their faces, slim their waists, and make themselves seem curvier. With teens and young adults spending much of their free time on social media sites, they are being exposed to celebrities and influencers who look flawless and have the “perfect” looks. As of April 2022, three of the KarJenner’s hold the spot for the most followed accounts on instagram; Kylie (331 million) taking the third most followed, Kim (303 million) at eighth most followed, and Khloé (235 million) with the tenth most followers on Instagram. Not far behind is Kendall Jenner (233 million) at the eleventh most followed and finally, the oldest sister, Kourtney being the twentieth most followed person on Instagram with 169 million followers. With all of the Kardashian-Jenner sisters ranking in the top twenty of most followed Instagram users, it is safe to say that they can be highly influential and definitely proven to be so. 

I wanted the design of my project to fit well with the theme of social media sites so I chose to make a Tumblr blog. Tumblr was my first choice because of how easy it is to implement different tabs and create separate pages. The homepage of the blog contains my final report, and on the left side of the page are four different links; Bibliography, Kylie, Kim, and Photoshop. Being the most self-explanatory, the first tab contains the information of my bibliography. The section labeled “Kylie” has the header “The Reality of Kylie” because I wanted to focus on moments where Kylie Jenner has opened up about her own struggle with insecurities to highlight a side of her that tends to be masked on social media. In different video clips, the youngest Jenner sister reveals feeling insecure over her lips, weight gain, and the way her body looks after giving birth to her daughter, Stormi. Kylie’s vulnerability shows those who watch her on the regular that she also has bad days where she doesn’t feel confident about the way she looks and that all the makeup, fillers, and money in the world cannot always change those feelings. Similarly, I created a tab for Kim Kardashian which highlights her insecurities about her psoriasis, her weight gain after having two children, and how being curvy was a struggle at the beginning of her career. The final tab included on my Tumblr page is titled “Photoshop Fails” and it includes a few different examples of the Kardashian sisters very obviously editing their photos. As I state on the page, including their Photoshop mishaps is not meant to tear them down in any way but instead, it is meant to show their viewers that even some of the most followed women in the world do not look as toned and flawless in real life as they do on Instagram. It is crucial for young adults and teens to learn that social media does not equal reality and for those who can afford it, an attractive body and face can be bought or edited on quickly and easily. Being seen as attractive and having desirable bodies has definitely helped the Kardashian sisters rise to fame and through the use of social media, they ended up gaining an influential power that has changed the societal definition of beauty drastically. 

In order to understand how drastically the beauty standard has changed and just how influential the Kardashian sisters prove to be, it is necessary to review different facts and data. Prior to the 2010s when the Kardashians became a household name, the ideal physique was that of Paris Hilton or Kate Moss. Men doted over and women desired that tall, thin, model-like body which was seen all over television, magazines, clothing stores, and more. An hourglass figure and fuller assets were not sought after the way they are today, in-fact, women that were curvier were seem as “heavier” and less attractive. When Kim Kardashian began to show up more in the public eye and “Keeping up with the Kardashians” premiered in 2007, society’s opinions about “curvier,” “fuller,” or “thicker” women began to transform. In a 2013 essay about the family, The Kardashian Phenomenon: News Interpretation, author Amanda McClain confirms this transformation of body standards by writing; “Throughout the press coverage there is a consistent focus on the Kardashian sisters' body image, with particular emphasis on Kim Kardashian' s build. Kim is hailed as representative of a fuller figure than has been popular in the recent past. According to The Sydney Sunday Telegraph, "There's little doubt that the sexy reality television star brought curves back into style this year with her pneumatic figure.” Just less than a decade later, Kim Kardashian’s body type has become a sort of blueprint for other celebrities, upcoming influencers, designers, models, and your average, everyday person. Unfortunately, Kim’s body type is not as naturally and easily achievable for some, creating a lot of insecurities and societal pressures for people to succumb to fillers, plastic surgery, or both. 

The audience that the Kardashian family has does not only include the millions of Instagram followers they each have, but it also includes the audience of “over four million people per episode” when “Keeping up with the Kardashians” was airing on the network, E!, until June of 2021. (Sood 2017) For fourteen years and twenty seasons, along with numerous spin-off shows, the Kardashians remained on our television screens weekly and now they remain on our social media feeds daily as there is not a single day that one of the sisters is not sharing a photo or video online. Since so much of the sister’s lives have been shared over the past decade, audiences can easily feel as though they know and relate to them, giving them the false sense of security that the Kardashians would not alter or edit their bodies without being open and honest about it. While the Kardashians have shared much of their lives, they have each also become very well known for their bodies and to be honest about having work done or using Photoshopping tools would take away the illusion and fantasy they are attempting to portray. The family is well aware of the power they hold for the way they look as Kim was questioned about her frequent nudity on CNN and responded, "It's a part of my personality, for sure, and I definitely play it up a lot” Kim explained in another source, "It's definitely powerful" [being a sex symbol].” (McClain 2013) Kim’s confidence with her sexuality and being able to flaunt her body is admirable in itself but it is also a part of the reason why the beauty standard had transformed to begin with. 

Society began to notice the beauty ideals changing once beauty and business began to blend together. As each of the sister’s began to gain more fame and popularity, audiences realized just how much attention the family receives simply for being attractive and Simon references this in their article, Unrealistic Standards of Beauty and Examples of Self-Obsession: The Kardashians; “They create a social stigma prioritizing appearance over personality. Setting an unrealistic standard of beauty, women feel they have to replicate this look to be successful or liked. Because these women have become so successful partly due to their beauty and the way they market themselves to the public, women will associate the importance of beauty with success.” By creating the idea that being attractive equals success, society is implementing a very dangerous and harmful mindset that leaves people of all genders and ages feeling pressurized to look as good as the celebrities and influencers on Instagram. To put into further perspective just how much time people spend on their phones looking at themselves, researchers found that the “average millennial takes over 25,000 selfies in his or her lifetime.” (Paul 2018) At the same time as individuals are taking selfies and examining their features to find any flaw possible, they are also spending a lot of their time examining the “perfect” selfies taken by the KarJenners, forced to question why their skin isn’t that smooth or how every part of bodies can look so toned and thin. Social media sites have caused comparison to truly become the thief of joy because you are constantly exposed to people who are praised for the way they look and overtime, it is nearly impossible to not question what the difference between yourself and others are when they are adored, successful, and borderline worshipped for their looks. As we hit the middle of the 2010s, the Kardashians were becoming even more famous as they each began to start their own brands, Kim had just married Kanye West and welcomed their firstborn, North, and the youngest sister, Kylie, was creating quite the controversies over her changing looks. 

Now that society realized that social media, particularly Instagram, was not just a trending app for a short period of time and was actually here to stay, the sites were becoming a highlight reel of people’s best moments and photos rather than a place to share the small or silly moments of your days. Researchers came to the conclusion that approximately 90% of adolescents use social media daily and usually for more than two hours per day. (Ridpath 2019) These statistics become more concerning and are seen less as “normal teen behaviors” when scientists put into perspective that; “Teenage girls are vulnerable to the upward comparison as it means that they need to improve their beauty standards, thereby leaving them dissatisfied with their physical bodies, having doubts about their self-worth and also driving them to self-harm behavior.” (Henriques, Patnaik 2020) Over the last couple of years, cosmetic procedures and body dissatisfaction are hitting alarming rates, with girls of just thirteen years old finding interest in and going through with different surgical changes. Doctors have reported that teens are showing an increased interest in botox and other injectables, which they attribute to their social media feeds where they are seeing celebrities with lip and cheek fillers. Roughly 229,000 cosmetic procedures were done on patients aged 13-19 in 2017 alone, jumping cosmetic surgery procedures up 11% and the patients spending upwards of $6.5 billion. (Paul 2018) Society has reached a point where any slight insecurity can be changed with a single doctor’s appointment. Unfortunately, such mindsets fix physical insecurities but still leave people feeling dissatisfied with themselves. A result of social media that was not considered enough before each site was created is the way it effects the mental health of its users because of the images they are exposed to on a regular basis. Henriques and Patnaik discussed the dangers of social media and photo editing in their research, stating, “Unrealistic images of feminity, beauty, success and body shape promoted through social media images are associated with development of eating disorders and body dissatisfaction disorders."

In 2015, the youngest Kardashian-Jenner sister, Kylie, received lip injections because of her own insecurities and debuted her new look on Instagram. Being the youngest of the family, Kylie definitely has an influential power over the younger generations that the other sisters do not and her new lips sparked a chain reaction. Dr. Leah Totton remembers reporting a “70% rise in lip filler enquiries in the last 24 hours,” once Kylie revealed her look and Dr. Maryam Zamani remembers that, “We received a higher number of enquiries late last night and today than we would normally have.” (Akbareian 2015) It is difficult to deny the influence Kylie and her older sisters have had on beauty after researchers observed: “significant increase in TV programs on cosmetic surgery influenced a younger female audience to engage in such procedures. In particular, the author reported that females were more likely to consider cosmetic procedures due to dissatisfaction with their appearance shaped by exposure to reality TV programs.” (Sood 2017) Besides an increase in lip fillers, the overall statistics for cosmetic procedures reports an increase of 279% since 1997 and women between the ages of 17-24 were surveyed and 35% of respondents had already engaged in a cosmetic procedure. (Sood 2017) For the first time in years, the mixture of reality television and social media had ushered in a new wave of beauty that is just as exclusive as the previous beauty standards have been. Beauty was not only seen as a marker of success, but it became people’s main concern as individuals like the Kardashians and other social media influencers have created entire careers because of being attractive. Reality television and social media created an environment that allows anyone to gain fame and recognition if they fit a certain standard, which convinced many people to start transforming themselves to fit that mold. Doctors recall patients showing them images of Kylie Jenner or other influencers to cite inspiration for cosmetic procedures and Stafford Broumand responds; “These kids don’t realize those people have been filtered, and morphed and Photoshopped,” he said. “That is part of the education and discussion process that we go through before anything is done. We are trying to look out for them for their lifetimes and not just for the moment.” (Paul 2018) 

Deprogramming all of the toxic thoughts social media and reality television has implemented into the minds of adults, young adults, and teenagers would take years to do. Social media would have to become a place of honest and transparency, rather than a constant competition of “who looks best?” Celebrities and influencers would also have to take accountability for the body and beauty images that they promoted along with society as a whole. The Kardashian family could have helped promote a healthier beauty standard due to their influence that focuses on natural beauty or at least creates more conversations about insecurities, rather than helping form a beauty standard that has caused a dramatic increase in cosmetic procedures. The sisters could have even been honest about their own procedures and use of Photoshop which would have informed people that their bodies and facial features do not naturally look as they do online. While the Kardashian family cannot be blamed for single-handily changing the beauty standards, their use of social media and their influential power has created a certain “desirable” body type and look which, as we know now, is usually only accomplished through procedures and Photoshop.