I have long made a point of not keeping up with the Kardashians. It hasn't been easy. There were all those tabloids to avoid in the nail salon, all the entertainment shows to click past on TV. I had to swear off Perez Hilton, TMZ, Jezebel, Facebook, Twitter and even the whole Internet for hours, sometimes days, on end.
Naturally, I failed. A certain amount of the Kardashian narrative seeped into my brain uninvited – I know far more about Kim's pregnancy than I should, and even retained a mental picture of the disastrous maternity frock she wore to a Met Ball. But for the most part I have lived in Kardashian-free mental bliss. I had, until just this week, never watched a single episode of their popular reality TV show.
What brought me over to Kardashian-watching was not a failure of taste or even a particularly bad hangover. It was a social issue. For the past month I have found myself fascinated, troubled and ultimately moved by Bruce Jenner's very public gender transition.
Jenner, as many of you know, is a former Olympic gold-medal-winning decathlete and father to Kendall and Kylie Jenner, and the long-time stepdad to the four Kardashian kids, Kourtney, Khloe, Kim and brother Rob. Or something like that. In any case, he was married to their mom Kris.
Since splitting with his former wife, Jenner announced in a 20/20 interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer that he plans to transition to female – something that had been widely speculated upon in the gutter press after long-lens photos emerged of him in a pony tail and makeup earlier this spring. According to Jenner, he has been struggling with his gender identity since childhood – and his decision to "come out" after a life lived so thoroughly in the public eye is a brave one.
But what's also been extraordinary is the reaction of his family – that famously solipsistic sisterhood. Jenner's transition would have been just another sad tabloid freak show, one man's personal identity crisis trivialized on the cover of celeb magazines, if the Kards hadn't surprised the world by stepping in and giving his story context. They have talked about glimpsing him in women's clothing over the years, and keeping the secret from their mother, as well as their fears he might be having an affair when they found makeup in his belongings.
But the real star of the circus has been Kim. In a recent interview with Access Hollywood, she described first seeing her stepdad as a woman, a moment she said was "amazing, and she looked beautiful, really beautiful. She was dressed up, beautiful makeup, beautiful hair, very, very beautiful and very comfortable."
Being outwardly beautiful is, of course, a top priority in Kardashianworld, but this was something different. Kim was describing an inner beauty and deeper comfort that can only come from having watched someone you love struggle and begin to accept themselves. On the Today show, she was wise and full of grace. "I don't know what life would be like if you felt like you just weren't yourself," she told Matt Lauer. "It's not something you or I can fully understand, but I don't even think we have to."
Now the cynics might sniff that it's all a big publicity grab, just another trumped-up trick in the Kardashians' bottomless Hermes handbag, but I don't think so. Their appeal – Kim's in particular – is a commodity that's more socially mainstream and synthetically sweet than Coca-Cola. Transexuality, even familial proximity to it, could be dangerous for her distinctly un-subversive brand. By speaking out for Bruce Jenner, Kim Kardashian may have put her livelihood on the line. And I, for one, am impressed by her bravery. I never thought I'd say this, but she has won my respect.
Like it or not, the power of her influence is mind-boggling. This is a woman who gets paid $10,000 for a tweet, and whose major accomplishment is having passively changed the way an entire generation applies makeup. She may have been utterly without a point until now – a black hole of glitter-dusted antimatter – but in Jenner's story she has found a meaningful cause to support. And fittingly for a woman who has made a career out of being an ornamental exhibitionist, it's a personal one. No UN ambassadorship and Third World photo-ops for Kim – instead she's just sticking up for someone she adores because "he's got the biggest heart."
Ridiculous as her fame is, what Kim and her siblings have done to promote awareness and understanding of transgender people is seriously inspiring. Five years of gay pride marches and LGBT lobbying across the western hemisphere couldn't have done what the Kardashians and Jenners have accomplished in the past few weeks, which is to simply move the narrative forward, past prevailing notions of "weirdness" and general sniggering and into a wider state of acceptance for transgender people everywhere.
Watching the last two episodes of the KUWTK (About Bruce Parts 1 and 2), I was struck by how people can surprise us, even people we know only through the warped lens of TV. I thought Kim Kardashian represented everything I loathe about the world, but in her surprising kindness and support of her stepdad, she's shown that you can't judge a person by her reality show.