Kim Kardashian’s recent tweets about her birthday celebrations have unsurprisingly caused quite the social media storm. For the past eight months, it has been rare to see anyone celebrating their birthday without zoom or social distancing involved, especially with cases once again rising. Kim released a series of tweets explaining how she managed to pull off said celebrations explaining how ‘humbled’ and ‘blessed’ she was to be able to mass test her friends and go to a private island to celebrate. It is strange to see the words ‘humble’ and ‘private island’ in the same tweet, but what is even more striking about this series of tweets is trying to understand why they were posted at all.
It goes without saying that most people would jump at similar opportunities if they had the means to do it this year. It’s been a year where many people have had to sacrifice seeing their family. Realistically the fact Kim Kardashian had these celebrations, despite it showing extreme privilege, is not the main issue at hand, many normal people have twisted the rules at points this year and the mass testing of her friends made it as safe as possible. The bigger issue is why it needed to be posted to millions of people on Twitter who may have not seen their friends for months on end because of the pandemic. It seems egotistical and insensitive to post something like this no matter what the milestone. People know rules and moral precedents are going to be broken by people occasionally, posting on social media just seems to endorse it when it could easily be kept in private.
I’m not an avid Kardashian hater. I usually think they receive a lot of abuse for problems that aren’t directly caused by them, such as beauty standards that are heavily perpetuated by the media and the patriarchy which seems unfair to fall on five famous women with all eyes on them. I don’t agree with the many controversies they’ve caused surrounding body image, I just believe this reflects a wider societal issue rather than them being personally terrible people.
This being said, the toxicity perpetuated on social media by the Kardashian-Jenner family is so apparent in situations like this they have often lead the movement to a new social media age and are undoubtedly well known for going viral. There is no lack of controversy surrounding the Kardashians, but seemingly bragging about how much you and your friends personally enjoyed celebrating on a private island is a push even for someone surrounded by drama their whole life. As a public figure and someone who actively pursues media attention, there is some personal responsibility in a time like this to have some thought about what is acceptable to post. If they felt the need to break precedents observed by most people why did it need to be spread all over social media as some kind of punch in the face to those who cannot do this?
Since the controversial tweets younger sibling Kendall Jenner has also been slammed for behaving irresponsibly in the pandemic by throwing a birthday/Halloween party with a series of posters telling people to not post anything on social media. These directions were ignored by many of the guests, which is unsurprising giving the social media culture that modern influencers live by. This situation is much more shameless and irresponsible than the aforementioned tweets and birthday celebrations. Celebrities and people who can afford to break the rules deliberately flouting them and once again posting on social media is unfair and immoral.
No matter the circumstances, on a moral level there are people who have followed the rules completely and are struggling because of it. Taking to social media to boast irresponsible parties is privilege at its finest. The COVID-19 pandemic has already highlighted hugely how major public figures get away with what normal people couldn’t. It is incredibly degrading for it to be constantly pushed in the faces of the average person who has given up everything they can in 2020 to keep others safe.
Abbie Monaghan
Image source: Wikimedia Commons