Keeping up with Online Beauty Standards- Thoughts Behind Khloe Kardashian's Leaked Photo

How many times have you asked your friend not to post that specific photo, or touched up the lighting before you let it grace the instagram platform? Many of us look through photos and delete before we send them to our friends. We constantly overthink, overedit, and overanalyze what we put out on our social media platforms. We’ve all heard of the idea that social media is a highlight reel of someone’s life. We post what we want others to see and how we want them to see us, rarely exposing our most vulnerable selves. Instagram influencers and celebrities with millions of followers have set these beauty standards for the rest of us to follow. It is painful to envision young girls growing up with this edited imagery and completely unattainable beauty standards that many women are constantly striving for. Last week, an unflattering and private photo of reality star Khloe Kardashian was published without her knowledge and has since begun conversation about a topic that was already on our radar.

From Khloe’s Instagram

Kardashian released statements on Instagram and Twitter this week about this leaked photo. While proclaiming that this untouched photo was “beautiful” she explained the long history of body shaming and comparison she has faced in the media over the past few decades. Khloe has been constantly compared to her four sisters, even accused of having a different father because people claimed there was no chance she was fully related to Kourtney and Kim. This isolating treatment would sink in to those with even the thickest skin, eventually impacting the way they see themselves. This seems to play into a recent pattern of public opinion getting to Khloe this year. In the current and final season of Keeping up with the Kardashians, the family talks about the fact that Khloe has begun to overthink the constant negative attention she receives. There are clips of Tristan speaking with Scott and Kim about the fact that she hides being with him solely because of public perception. 

A portion of Kardashian’s following has not been sympathetic about the unflattering image, blaming her family for our current beauty standards in American society. We believe that there is certainly truth to this claim. In the past few years since Kylie Jenner began getting lip fillers, this cosmetic treatment has been extremely normalized. There are filters on instagram and snapchat, making anyone’s face morph into a Kardashian-esque look. And it’s all about the ass recently, with many getting surgery or other treatments to enhance their rear. Yet, we still feel a lot of empathy for Khloe. She has been scrutinized and picked apart for years. And if we all feel the need to only expose certain sides, or angles, of ourselves then she should be given that same choice. 

We think the bigger conversation behind this leaked photo is how our society must normalize the reality that women’s bodies are not meant to fit a perfect standard, even when they set that standard. Our bodies will always change, so hiding that does not serve oneself or their following. It is our hope that this photo perhaps helped some people realize that posing, angles, lighting, and makeup can transform the same body in a matter of minutes. And one is not better than the other. 

A recent trend emerged on TikTok where TikTok stars, influencers, and ordinary individuals began to post videos of themselves, showing their body in its many forms. “Bodies that look like this, also look like this” covered our For You Page, unveiling the fact that we all have imperfections and the ability to hide those from the world. We commend the women who partook in this trend showing that the models we see scrolling through our instagram pages also look like us after we’ve eaten a bowl of ice cream lounged across the floor. 

While many influencers with prominent followings have hid their imperfections from the camera, some women are allowing these to surface. Danielle Bernstein is one such influencer who spoke out this year about her journey with her body, photoshop, and self love. After facing backlash for photoshopping her body in photos, “I never realized how impactful this could be for younger women that follow me, in a negative way. I think I have grown a truly loving relationship with my body in person, I just don’t always like the way that I look in photos… over the years I’ve learned how to work my angles and manipulate lighting to hide my imperfections but I also use facetune…” She goes on to explain that it can take a toll to be on a platform where millions of people view you every day, particularly when they have something to say about your appearance. Bernstein promised to do better and break up with facetune. In the months since she has done just that. Bernstein still “works her angles” but has been posting highlighting her cellulite and other imperfections. We hope this is a gradual step towards other influencers making their platforms more authentic. More importantly, we hope that women understand that their bodies are beautiful, good angles and bad.