Media Critique: Keeping Up With The Kardashians

columns, countless magazine covers, and most notably, an exceedingly popular reality television show, this ostentatious family known as the Kardashians certainly does not “keep up” their fame by flying under the radar. How did their empire begin? The release of Kim Kardashian’s sex tape with singer Ray J stimulated the debut of Keeping Up with the Kardashians in October of 2007. Truthfully, the making of the main stars Kourtney, Kim, and Khloe began long before the scandal. As children, they had a

attention, it’s the infamous Kardashian clan in their reality television spinoff, Keeping Up With The Kardashians. From the notorious hip hop artist Kanye West, former NBA basketball player Lamar Odom, or controverisial Olympic gold metalist, the now Caitlyn Jenner, this family and everything that surrounds them, is always hitting the spotlight. In her novel, Keeping Up the Kardashian Brand: Celebrity, Materialism, and Sexuality, Amanda Scheiner McClain (2013) writes, “The Kardashians are everywhere, their

movies often lack substance of any kind for example take the Avengers franchise, the movie itself has very little plot or characterization but it is still produced over and over again because it is a source of revenue. This is an example of how new media technologies how what Adorno and Horkheimer mean by when they say art is becoming a commodity (Adorno and Horkheimer). Another criticism found within

you'll round up your first impression based on their appearance. Now a day’s young girls are easily influenced by everything they see around them, which influences how they want to appear. One major influence is social media and television shows such as “Keeping up with the Kardashians” or “Love and Hip-Hop.” Some teenage girls, and a small percentage of teenage boys, assume that to be beautiful they need to look exactly like these famous actors and singers they see all over social media and television

and forces women to measure themselves against an impossible beauty standard. Continuous exposure to stereotypical images and themes surrounding beauty, directly influence the way women perceive themselves and their peers. One study found that “Mass media is especially harmful to women because it constructs negative perceptions of women and reinforces them on a daily basis (Chapman, 2011).” According to Gerbner, Gross, Morgan and Signorielli (1980.), cultivation theory states that heavy television