This Just In - Kim Kardashian Has Cellulite!

This Just In - Kim Kardashian Has Cellulite!

By Tamerlane


That was the shocking headline the other day on the generic Yahoo page that one gets before logging in. Some glamour website had mistakenly (sic) posted an un-retouched photo that exposed the revolting globules of cellulite afflicting the model/notorious floozy's well-turned thighs.

Before-and-after photos accompanied this unsettling story. An overly made-up Kim, wearing a Wonder Woman outfit and striking a Bob Fosse pose, stares at the camera. She's more curvy than full-figured, really. I couldn't detect any cellulite (they had shaved off some belly and hip in the retouch), but she looked pretty hot to me in either shot. Cellulite-gate was obviously a publicity stunt, but I'm glad the lovely and untalented Ms. Kardashian did it. In her words, "I'm proud of my body and my curves and this picture coming out is probably helpful for everyone to see that just because I am on the cover of a magazine doesn't mean I'm perfect." Can the arc of Kim K's fabricated story in some small way help amend our culture's twisted image of beauty?

Subliminal and pervasive, cultural messages seep into our psyches from all around. Youth are especially susceptible, and our girls and young women are bombarded by one particularly destructive message: "you are irredeemably fat and unattractive!" Sure, girls will always critique each other and themselves, but they get their blueprint from Cosmo. Yet Cosmopolitan, a magazine designed by male homosexuals and featuring photoshopped Dachau inmates, is just the tip of the iceberg. Hollywood is shamefully complicit as well. I happen to be friendly with a couple of actresses, and have bumped into others at events. In person, most are pretty, some merely "striking", but all are really thin. Casting Anne Hathaway as the chubby, frumpy girl in Prada is a joke. Real women have curves. Cellulite happens.


As a riding instructor, I've gotten to know many teenage girls. Even the skinniest and prettiest have lamented their 'disgusting fatness'. The 14 year-old who rides with me every summer is easily one of the prettiest females I've ever encountered (actresses included.) Over the years, I've watched gangly cuteness sublimate into an exceptional beauty and grace. She is athletic, well-proportioned, a bit on the slim side. She exudes a cheerful, confident personality, and has a rare gift for working with horses. Yet this past summer, when I asked how she liked her winter barn, she mentioned neither horses nor instructors, but rather how horribly fat she was compared to the other girls there, singling out her "gross" legs. As discretely as possible, I assured her that she was very pretty, and jokingly warned that by the end of the summer, those legs would be even "grosser"- that is, more muscular - from riding every day.

My 20 year-old intern, who is tall, slender and lithe, with a radiant face and a brilliant mind, for years considered herself hopelessly fat and ugly. Only after boys went wild for her in college did she accept that she might in fact be ridiculously attractive. Still, she complains about her "huge" butt, when it's only that her meager hips are set a bit wide.

Girls don't simply grow out of these negative self-images, either. My close friend is in her early forties and has a stunning, pear-shaped figure. Since we're adult friends, it's safe for me to remind her that her figure drives me to distraction. Nevertheless, she agonizes about her cellulite, and after dinner, she'll pat her tummy and whine, "I have a food baby." (I'll grab my gut and reply, "well, I've got an entire orphanage over here!") My friend is a therapist who's combatted the destructive body images of late-stage bulimics and anorexics, but still struggles with her own.

Ironically, there's a heavy-set girl I teach who, though beset with all sorts of other emotional issues, is surprisingly comfortable with her body image. She'll matter-of-factly state, "I know I have a big body," and then laugh when I snort, "Yeah, so? When you think about it, it's a wonderful body-look at how well you can ride using that body!"

It breaks my heart that these young women, who, at a point in their lives when they should simply be enjoying the sans souci of youth and reveling in their natural abilities, are burdened with externally imposed self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy. In this area, our culture is as sick and abusive as Mommie Dearest. Why isn't more being done to end this near-universal mental torment, which creates lasting emotional scars?

Our society's fixation on thinness is an illness. In olden times, we admired a healthy body, whatever its conformation. Prior to our modern surfeit of food and lack of exercise, "fat" meant healthy, not obese. A round belly was a sign of plenty and thus a thing of beauty. I recall a quote from a letter written by a Union soldier during the Civil War. "The entire state of North Carolina is populated by fat and pretty women," he marveled.

Upon further investigation, I discovered that Cellulite-gate was indeed a stunt to promote Kardashian's new work-out video. "This all motivates me to stay in the gym because my goal this year has been to get in better shape and tone up!" gushes Kim. In other words, to lose those natural curves she's purportedly so proud of. Kim's official site, btw, is plastered with ads for diet programs. So it goes.

If our depraved culture must make role models out of vapid, amateur porn stars, is there any consolation in knowing that a least one of them is neither too thin, nor too heavy, but just right? Because it seems the only other solution is to nuke L.A.

(c) Tamerlane, 2009.
All rights reserved.