"The Kardashians"...Keeping up with what, exactly?

Just when I was convinced the face of our rapidly disappearing family unit had hidden itself completely, I tuned in to an episode of the "Keeping up with the Kardashians", on the E! channel for one more disgusting reminder. This one, shown at 9 PM on November 8th, brought me to tears. Not in laughter, but in sadness. Kim Kardashian, whose only claim to fame my Google search could produce is a rich deceased lawyer father (think: OJ), a sex-tape and some wild night romps with her celebrity friends. This episode followed Kim as her mother/manager ("mom-ager") booked her to do a Playboy celebrity photo spread for the upcoming Christmas edition.

The show started off with Kim not wanting to do Playboy, flat-out telling her mom, "No, I don't want to be known as a sex object." This was an intelligent statement, and for a minute I was hopeful...Until Kris's spoke. Her logic spoke volumes, telling her she should just go and see what it was all about, since it would be "a lot of money."

During the shoot, Kim was nervous and not feeling good about taking her clothes off, and she refused. Again, I was hopeful, especially when she asked her mom why she wasn't sticking up for her. Why not indeed? Sure, I have a little boy, but if I did have a girl whose only rise to stardom is the entire world seeing her engage in salacious sex acts on tape, I think I would try and steer her in a more promising direction. No such luck for Kim. Kris pressured Kim to go from posing in a bikini to taking it all off, snapping pictures with her own camera the entire shoot, cheering her daughter on. At one point, she said, "Good job honey, you're doing great!" It was here that I got the uber-creeps. I had just exclaimed those same words to my son a few months ago when he started walking. I wondered briefly if Kris ever was proud of her daughter for the little things, like studying hard, not going out with the boy who treats her like a sex object, posing nude....Oh, never mind.

To me, Kris Jenner (she's married to Gold-Medalist Bruce Jenner) is nothing short of a pimp. She strong-armed her daughter into posing for a pornographic publication for the money. Short and simple. What if Kim wanted to go to law school, and help families in need, or be a social-worker, or marry a loving man and raise a family without the glare of reality show cameras? How about then? Would her mom support her then? I suppose only if it involved a sexed-up spread for Maxim at some point.

It's pitying to see how hard her mom tries to be young and sexy. She showed up at the Playboy mansion wearing a plunging top with her breasts spilling out. The women has got to be in her mid-50's. Yikes. No one needs to see a middle-aged woman dressing like someone half her age. Even in Hollywood. Her own daughter told her to cover up! "No, I'm at the Playboy mansion!" She exclaimed excitedly, like Heff would want her for the cover instead. This was something she even suggested to the photo editor. "Maybe we could do a mother/daughter spread, ha ha." Not surprisingly, she didn't get a response on that one. I actually felt bad for her at one point. How empty and meaningless her life must be, to sell out her character and her daughters like this.

The show ended with Kris bringing home a nude picture of herself for her husband to see, unveiling it in front of the whole family (and the cameras, obviously). Bruce Jenner said he'd like to look at it more in the bedroom, and they went off to have sex, with the other girls screaming. "Whoo-hoo, sexy bitch!" to their mom. Nice. I'm sure Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt would be proud to see the fruits of their efforts playing out like this.

After giving birth and nursing my son, and seeing how fragile and innocent kids start off in this world, witnessing this family interact greatly saddened me. The Kardashian girls, under the oh-so watchful eye of their fame-obsessed mom are now a part of a Hollywood and heading for an inevitable train wreck. For what? A little bit of fame? Some parties and nice clothes? When they die, they cant take any of it with them, and their legacy? Nothing but a whole lot of skin, bad grammar, foul mouths and sexed up personas that will be left behind. Too, too sad.

The morale of this story is simple. Once Hugh Hefner told Kim she couldn't pose unless she took it all off (duh, even I knew the whole bikini shot was going to be tossed eventually), she apparently felt much better with his soothing assurances that Marilyn Monroe was the first cover girl in 1953. So, in the words of Kim, "If Marlyn did it, I can too. That made me feel a lot
better." Well as long as she's thinking clearly. I cringe to see what her next career move is. I'm sure her manager will agree to anything, as long as the price is right.