Why I’m Not Ashamed to Love The Kardashians

Keeping Up With The Kardashians just launched its ninth season and I’m all kinds of excited. Well, not ALL kinds of excited, I’m not the “I can’t wait to hate-watch this season because I hate the Kardashians with the fire of a thousand suns” kind of excited. I genuinely like the Kardashians as characters and I know that puts me in the minority of audience members (or at least in the minority of audience members willing to admit that they actually like the family they’ve spent nine seasons, plus all the spin-off series, watching).

The Kardashians get a lot of hate. They might be the most-hated family in America. Kim gets flack for her shopping addiction (girl can drop ten grand in a store in a hot second, it’s intense), Kris takes heat for her momager-ing, Khloe’s still getting guff about not having to do her jail time/marrying Lamar after knowing him for two and a half days, Kourtney gets chewed out for being a pill and having two (and a third on the way) kids with the dude who’s maybe cheating on her throughout the run of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Rob is condemned for putting on weight. Even Kendall and Kylie, the Jenner girls who used to fly under the radar because they were, like, 8, are now major players in the Kardashian fame game and are taking their own share of hits for being members of the Kardashian clan. The girls cowrote a YA dystopian novel that currently has one and a half stars on Amazon. I’ve never seen ANYTHING get less than two stars on Amazon. The Kardashian haters, they are legion.

I’m not going to argue against a lot of the charges brought up against the Kardashians (“Spoiled!” “Entitled!””Ridiculous!” “Only famous for being famous!” “Plastic surgery!”) because honestly I think a lot of that is true. I also think a majority of celebrities are probably a combo-platter of spoiled/entitled/ridiculous/only famous for being famous/veterans of nose jobs, but we don’t give all celebrities a hard time for visibly demonstrating the side effects that often accompany being rich or famous or (Jaws music) rich AND famous.

The Ladies K are flawed women. The Kardashian family is a family with problems. And I STILL like them. I think they’re really fun. I love how they embrace glitz and glamour and excess like they’re throwing a straight-up Roman Bacchanal every day of the year. I also love how much that family genuinely loves each other. You can scream “Privileged!” and “Self-involved!” and “No one should EVER spend ten-thousand dollars at a store unless they’re BUYING THAT STORE!” at the Kardashians until you’re blue in the face. Those women love each other like crazy.

I have this running joke with my family that basically goes something along the lines of “What if we did a family member swap with the Kardashians and you guys traded me out for Khloé and so she became Khloé Steinkellner and I became Kit Kardashian and Khloé had to meet Steinkellner standards by reading more books and cracking more jokes per minute, whereas I had to learn how to walk in gazillion-inch heels and train with Kim’s special butt trainer so that my booty cheeks could meet Kardashian butt standards?” It’s a joke, and a stupid one at that, and I would never want to be swapped out of my family into ANY other family, including the Obamas and the Streeps, but if I did get swapped into the Kardashians, as weird a fit as it would be, I think I would have fun with their bacchanal lifestyle and I think I would appreciate being the recipient of all that mama and sister love.

I’ve said my piece. I genuinely like the Kardashians. I recognize their shortcomings, I still like them, and I’m not apologizing for it. And if you like The Real Housewives of Wherever, or that one girl on The Bachelor that is the recipient of ALL the Internet hate, girl, I feel you. We got to stick together and stick up for our reality favorites.

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