Kylie Jenner appears to call out her family’s role in setting beauty standards in The Kardashians Season 3 trailer, and I am skeptical.
In the trailer, Kylie appears talking to her sisters, saying, “All of us just need to have a bigger conversation about the beauty standards that we’re setting.”
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“I don’t want my daughter to do the things I did,” she continues.
A later clip then shows Kylie saying, “I wish I never touched anything to begin with.”
This echoes what Kylie said in an earlier teaser trailer: “We have huge influence, what are we doing with our power?”
It could present an interesting opportunity for the Kar-Jenners to address what they have skirted around for so long. In the Keeping Up With the Kardashians reunion, Kim and Kendall denied that they set an unattainable standard — maintaining that they simply promoted “being healthy.”
Last year, Kim faced further backlash for insisting, “If I’m doing it, it’s attainable” when asked if she set “unrealistic” beauty standards for people. In Kim’s world, nightly laser treatments are attainable.
Kylie reentered the conversation in an interview with Homme Girls earlier this month when she said, “I think a big misconception about me is that I’ve had so much surgery on my face and that I was some insecure person, and I really wasn’t!”
She even explicitly discussed Stormi in the same interview, saying “That she’s perfect the way that she is” and “I see my features in my daughter and my son now, but you know, my daughter looks like me. I get to see my beauty in her.”
Addressing a controversy that has haunted the family for years on their own show certainly falls in line with how they’ve tackled such things in the past. However, the topic is especially thorny for the family given how much they stand to profit from promoting beauty standards — Kylie Cosmetics and Kylie Skin certainly come to mind.
I’m curious to hear her family’s take on how they see themselves in this issue. Kourtney is one that comes to mind, given that she called out commenters for speculating about “women’s bodies” on a post promoting “vaginal health” gummies that I would argue prey on people’s insecurities of the “freshness and odor” of their vaginas.
For me, it’s always one step forward and two steps back with the Kar-Jenners. Kylie was praised for posting unfiltered photo of her postpartum stomach last year — but then quickly posted about her abs “making a comeback” a few weeks later. Historically, I see it as paying lip service to the changing language around body image — without ever having to commit to helping dismantle a system that they are both the engineers and victims of.
I hope to be proven wrong! The Kardashians Season 3 debuts May 25 on Hulu.