Topping the tabloids this week: the Kardashian-Jenner release of a bizarre, booty-spanking home video set to Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize.” The multi-generational gyrations, filmed on a yacht, have sparked parent protests—mostly since Kris Jenner’s 14- and 16-year-old daughters are featured dancing in bikinis, with close-up camera pans across their scantily-clad bottoms.
We were certainly, well, mesmerized watching it. It felt inappropriate in some ways, but just cheesy and uncomfortable in others. (Khloe was conspicuously absent, a decision she probably won’t regret.) Are there some R-rated moment, or at least NC-17 ones? Sure. Bruce Jenner “raises the roof” behind a leopard-muumuu’d Kris, spanking her butt in one scene. Another cut shows Kim’s famous derriere dipping in and out of a hot tub, and Rob makes an obvious simulated sex gesture that’s pretty vulgar. The teens preen and pout and swivel in teeny bikinis. The whole thing is, frankly, kind of weird.
Watch the video below:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cxdnz6iPvk[/youtube]
But is it worth all of the controversy? In their world, it’s probably just a kase of the Kardashians klowning around and akting krazy. It’s what they DO. They film themselves being provocative and make bank—clearly a business strategy that keeps food on the table.
But this video also pushed some major buttons. The teen Jenner girls’ Twitstorm turned into a s***storm. Even Bonnie Fuller, Virgo queen of tabloid-land and First Editrix of celebrity scandals (she’s the publisher of HollywoodLife.com and former Us Weekly ed-in-chief), slammed the video in her Huffington Post piece “Kris Jenner Is Exploiting Her Teen Daughters’ Sexuality on Twitter Video.” She also wrote a Hollywood Life piece called “Kris Jenner: You’re A Lousy Mom For Exploiting Your Own & Kendall & Kylie’s Sexuality On Video.” Tell us how you really feel, Bonnie.
Is it that black-and-white? We don’t think so. Not that we love the idea of commodifying your clan, but at the same time, the world keeps on watching those E! Kardashian spinoffs, so clearly, we’re “hypnotized” by Kris Jenner’s family. They’re sexy and they know it.
Although we agree with Fuller on some points, we also happen to know that the Scorpio mom is at ease about the birds and the bees. As controlling as she can be in the business world (hi, Momager), she’s got an earthy sense of humor about nudity, sex, and her seductive powers. Scorpio is the sign of intimacy and sexuality. It rules the crotch and reproductive organs, after all, so playing the virgin mum is not the Scorpio mother’s thing. She will not go quietly into muffin-top “mom jeans.” Ever.
And let’s play the temptress’ advocate here. In this puritanical world, we’ve forgotten that she who has the most sex has the highest chance of getting pregnant, thus becoming a mom. Duh. So why are we all playing along with the idea that babies are made by immaculate conception, and that a mother’s virginal image is somehow directly proportional to how many kids she spawns. (Admonishes Fuller: “Kris Jenner—grow up and face reality. You are not an irresponsible teen …you’re a 56-year-old mother of six!”) Perhaps that’s why so many Scorpio women we know refuse to tell their age!
Kylie and Kendall ride the lesser-known Kardashian asses.
Scorpio mom Demi Moore has come under the same fire for years. In 1991, her naked, seven-months pregnant Vanity Fair cover shocked the world, and she kept on going—inspiring the unbearably sexist term “cougar” by bagging the much-younger Ashton, smoking spice, and dirty dancing at a resort with her eldest to cope with post-divorce grief. Scorpio mom Jenny McCarthy posed in Playboy at 40, and aired her waxing habits candidly on daytime TV. Real Housewives of New York’s Ramona Singer, a Scorpio, has heard tongues cluck about her term “turtle time”—getting loose and wild after hours. Then there’s Scorpio Bethenny Frankel, who talks candidly about her husbands genitalia on Bravo. The Scorpio mom may be intimidating in some scenarios, but she also knows how to have fun. And she’ll readily admit that “inappropriate” is her middle name.
Yet, the finer point here—and what’s triggering so many concerned citizens—is the difference between being SEXUAL and being SEXUALIZED. And that’s where the Kardashians’ video blurs the boundaries, making us clutch our daughters protectively and pray for their so-called innocence—or blissful ignorance.
Being sexual is a natural expression of a basic human instinct, the very thing that makes our species survive. It comes from your authentic self and radiates outward. Sexual energy is life force energy, desire, drive. We are all sexual—in the same way that we all have personalities—and it’s a fact of life. It’s healthy for adults, like Kris Jenner, to be as sexual as they wanna be. And it’s healthy for children to have age-appropriate sexual awareness.
Being sexualized, on the other hand, is imposed on us. It’s an outside source projecting a contrived image of sexiness onto someone else—usually someone younger or less powerful than the spinmaster. (Cue the underage Jenner girls.) The sexualized person becomes an object, easily dehumanized, and that’s where so-called sexuality starts to feel “dirty” and complicated. Being sexualized lacks power, centeredness and dignity. There’s a dominant/submissive vibe, a sense that the sexualized person has no agency or say in the formulation of her own sexual persona.
Is Kris Jenner sexualizing Kylie and Kendall? It’s hard to say. After all, they live smack in the middle of Hollywood, in an age where social media, cell phones and the Internet are exposing a shocking percentage of young people to sexualized imagery. They also have an older sister with a leaked home porno past, and whose ass has eclipsed Jennifer Lopez’s in the “world’s most coveted body part” department. Kim Kardashian, despite having lines and plot twists on her own show, is known and admired for her looks, and switches between being subject and object from moment to moment. One minute she’s a relatable hopeless romantic searching for love, the next, she’s the mere silhouette of an eye-popping, Hottentot Venus booty.
Slamming Kris Jenner’s parenting seems to easy and frankly, obvious. As a mom, I want the right to be playful, sexy and free…and I don’t want to have to follow some kind of matronly mold just because I’ve become a parent. What a matriarch does in her own home is her business. However, I might suggest that the Kardashian Jenner family become a bit more discerning about leaking home video footage to the world. They’ve now had what counts as two strikes (the Kim-Ray J “breakout” porn and now this). Three strikes and you might just be out. Keep it in the library, Kris, and don’t let the housekeeper find it!