What Kim Kardashian's "Paper" Magazine Shoot Taught Us About Black Female Identity

The recent release of Kim Kardashian's fully nude Paper magazine spread was done with the intent to "Break the Internet." And, to an extent, it did, garnering thousands of likes and responses on Kardashian's social media accounts and those who reposted the images. However, on a larger scale, Kardashian's most recent publicity stunt has not truly broken  anything. Rather, it is another piece of evidence that ultimately upholds a series of disturbingly prevalent trends that have developed in American society over the past thirty years.

Kardashian, as a public figure, is often uplifted in society as the ideal in physical perfection, being slightly tan and exotic enough to be exempted from the travails of "basic" Whiteness, but nowhere near brown enough to fall into the categories of racial fetishization and social undesirability that plague Asian, Latina, and African American women. Kardashian's physical form is a perfect composite of all the features traditionally and stereotypically belonging to women of color-- large breasts, a small, curved waist, and large and proportional (more or less, depending on to whom you're speaking) hips and behind. However, what Kardashian also lacks is the "attitude" or "ratchetness" (once again, depending on to whom you're speaking) that is stereotypically associated with African American women.

In short, Kardashian has a Black girl booty without all of the Black girl "drama," and that is what draws men (particularly Black men) to her public persona.

At a recent event that I helped organize called "Black Girls Rise," one of the panelists articulated that African American men tend to praise the appearances of White women with more voluptuous and curvy bodies, placing them on pedestals and using their combined appearance and perceived stereotypical passivity to degrade African American women. This fact, which operates in tandem with derogatory comments against Black women by rappers Yung Berg and A$AP Rocky,  successfully captures the particular breed of misogyny directed toward Black women, generally at the hands of African American men.

Within the wider (non-Black) American society, the African American female aesthetic is either condemned (such as with Rihanna's Lui Magazine shoot) or totally ignored (such as the "Carolina Beaumont" image that inspired Jean-Paul Goude's Paper Magazine spread with Kardashian). This, compounded with the prevalence of easily-lampooned stereotypes such as the "Angry Black Woman," the Mammy, and the Jezebel in American media outlets, successfully results in the severe reduction or total erasure of the Black female identity from American society. But in its absence, the Black female body remains, reincarnated in that of Kim Kardashian, Iggy Azalea, and other White women who are praised for having stereotypically "Black" bodies. Paired with this are the legions of non-Black women who clamor to purchase lip injections, butt implants, breast augmentations, and tanning beds in order to become what society has determined to be the feminine ideal.

In short, society's ideal woman is one who is Black.

But is she really? In these surgeries, cosmetic procedures, and digital enhancements, the fundamental elements of what makes the Black female identity unique and desirable are stripped away to generic nothingness, the basic intricacies of our personalities and ability for complex thought replaced with a falsely enhanced body that is easily marketable in its "safeness" to a wider American society that is wary of Black femininity but relishes the contours of her body. There is no place for the Black female identity, with all of its nuances, intersections, and pressing questions about the nature of inequality, in American society. But there is room enough for her body, carved into pieces and injected and sewn into non-Black reality stars, musicians, and other public figures who offer a "safe" alternative to the stereotypical aggression and "drama" of African American women.

However, African American women are not the only ones who suffer from these generalizations and the separation of the Black female identity and the Black female body. White women, who are equally deserving of respect and equally capable of intellectual and ideological complexity, are often caught in the crosshairs of a misogynistic debate that rages within the African American community. The penultimate threat that Black men make against Black women is to "leave your ass for a White girl," implying that any White woman, regardless of her individual identity or beliefs, is superior to or more docile than her African American counterpart. These sorts of threats and arguments create divisions among women of differing ethnicities and encourage the creation of internal hierarchies based on race rather than sustaining a racially diverse community that is equally invested in confronting issues that affect all women.

It is certainly easy for both Black and White women to develop feelings of distrust or contempt toward each other as a result of the paradigm that has been It is certainly a temptation for White women, as the pinnacle of the Eurocentric beauty ideal, to ignore or celebrate the struggles for agency and respect that Black women face on a daily basis. Similarly, it can be tempting for Black women to disregard possible collaborations with White women or to generalize their identities as a result of hurtful and misogynistic comments made by prominent male figures in the African American community.

However, if we all band together as a group, regardless of race or ethnicity, we may never have to be subjected to the sight of Kim Kardashian's bare behind ever again. And that's something worth fighting for.