Skip to main content
book review

Kim Kardashian West

Much to the chagrin of snap-happy celebrities and those who follow them on Instagram, selfies were banned at Monday night's Met Gala. According to the New York Post, the event's high priestess – Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour – decided that the taking of selfies (and social media in general) had no place on what is supposed to be the world's most haute red carpet.

Speaking at a recent press conference, Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Frémaux announced plans to enforce a similar celebrity selfie crackdown along the Riviera later this month, calling the rise of smartphone self-portraiture both "ridiculous" and "grotesque." Meanwhile, selfie sticks – the best-selling Canadian invention that acts as an extended arm, allowing for more dexterous snapping – have emerged as apparatus-non-grata, banned everywhere from the Wimbledon to Coachella, the Colosseum to the Vatican. That last location is particularly noteworthy given Pope Francis's status as early adopter – His Holiness pioneered the Papal selfie back in 2013.

Since then, the selfie has become a standard in documentation, even when it almost certainly should not be (see: #funeralselfie) Over one million are uploaded to Instagram every day, with this latest bout of backlash offering but further proof that– love them or loathe them – selfies are everywhere.

It's a statement that could just as easily apply to Kim Kardashian West – the woman most frequently credited with the rise of selfie culture, and (not unrelatedly) the fall of civilization. Earlier this week, a 21-year-old app developer named James Shamsi introduced #KardBlock, an online browser extension that blocks any and all mentions of the planet's most polarizing family. The timing couldn't be better or, at least more pointed, since this week also saw the release of Selfish, Kim Kardashian West's 400-page photographic homage to her favourite art form. She has been doing the publicity rounds– instructing Jimmy Kimmel on how to take the perfect selfie on his late night talk show, discussing daughter North West's early aptitude for selfie snapping at the Variety Power of Women luncheon (where she was honoured alongside Lena Dunham and Whoopi Goldberg), and participating in a three-way rear-off with Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez at Monday night's Met festivities.

Photos of Kardashian West's original 2013 Met Gala appearances are among the 479 selfies included in Selfish, which is being positioned as a coffee-table book (since "bathroom book" has yet to gain official recognition in the publishing world). The snaps are organized chronologically, starting in 2006 with a few photos of Kardashian West and her former-employer-turned-launch-pad Paris Hilton. Other noted selfie co-stars include Madonna, Donatella Versace, Ellen DeGeneres, J. Lo, Serena Williams, various permutations of Kardashians/Jenners, Kanye, baby North and many, many skimpy swimsuits. Bikini selfies, confides Kardashian West "are my favourite" (she says the same thing about mirror selfies and selfies in cars). Presumably for easy viewing, the most X-rated snaps are contained in a black page section. These, Kardashian West tells us, are the photos she takes "for [her] husband," making what is probably an unintentionally weighty comment on the perversion of privacy in the Internet era. (Other commentary is less consequential: "Fresh spray tan. I get so dark…Kanye calls it a Yé-tan.")

It would be incredibly easy to dismiss Selfish as an idiotic, insignificant and grossly indulgent monument to contemporary narcissism, which is all true – except for the insignificant part. Setting aside the fact that a creating a hardcover book of Instagram photos is sort of a cheeky and subversive concept to begin with, Selfish speaks to a new era of both self and celebrity obsession overwrought. Does that make it art? It's a question one feels compelled to consider, flipping through hundreds of pages of … brilliant personal branding? Shameless self-promotion? Accidental pop art?

When Andy Warhol's soup cans were first shown at the Ferus Gallery in 1962, many people wrote the collection off as stupid (the paintings barely sold and most critics turned up their noses). Today the same commonplace cans of Consommé and Chicken Noodle are recognized as significant markers in the debate about the nature of art, and – just go with me here – it's possible that, in time, Kim Kardashian West (her selfies, her self) might be seen as part of the same ongoing arbitration.

While Warhol's work asked his audience to consider context (How is a piece made, by hand or by machine? Where is it found, in a corner store or a gallery?) Selfish raises questions about the creator's intentions and how they factor into whether something is defined as art or not: Can Kardashian West's work be artistry regardless of whether she means it that way? Even those who would sooner poke their eyes out than read about her love of "Miami nights" or why bangs were a "bad idea" can probably concede that Selfish has a place in a contemporary time capsule. That's assuming that we can't just wrap up its author and toss her in, since when we talk about the work, what we're really talking about is the woman herself.

Warhol's notion of "15 minutes of fame" got a lot of airtime when reality TV first took hold of popular culture back in the early aughts. Paris Hilton, Snooky, Honey Boo Boo – each of them played by the rules, sucking up an absurd amount of oxygen and then disappearing back into the sludge. Not Kim. When we told her she didn't have value, she created a multi-million-dollar empire. When we said she was low rent, she married an A-list celebrity and appeared on the cover of Vogue. When the world said, Okay, seriously, enough already, the woman oiled herself up like a greased pig, perched a champagne goblet on her butt and broke the Internet. Ridiculous and grotesque, to be sure, but maybe also a little brilliant – by mistake.

Courtney Shea is a Toronto writer.

Interact with The Globe