Dear Bel,
I am a 40-something mother of four children, with an enviable lifestyle and a very close-knit family. But despite these symbols of success, I can’t seem to stop obsessing about my appearance. Yes, I’ve had a few minor adjustments here and there (my butt is still the talk of Los Angeles) and I’m no stranger to the occasional syringe of Botox. I love the attention I get when I dress in extravagant outfits – the skimpier the better, and that means I can still stand out in a crowd of younger women. But it’s my latest look that really got everyone talking: I slipped into a corset that gave me a small waist and that some health experts considered dangerous and a bad example for young women. But he kept all eyes on me and that makes me very excited. Am I stuck in an attention-seeking cycle?
Kim
Kim Kardashian made a splash by donning a corset with a 19-inch waist at the Met Gala on Monday night.
Who knew you were a sweet old-fashioned girl deep down! Words fail even the most experienced wordsmith (i.e. me) as he grapples with the latest image of him. I was… well… stunned, as they say. I stared at your Met Gala photo on the front page of my Daily Mail, and then at the other snapshots (front and back views) on page 3. They made me dizzy: it was a sickening feeling of stepping back through the centuries, to when It was the dream of every rich and idle woman to have a waist as small as yours.
Your tiny waist reminded me of the classic models of Victorian fashion: all the butt and bustle in the back and the slimmer, corseted waist, just right for the dominant, possessive hand of the big macho that every girl is supposed to desire. Make no mistake: that’s what it’s all about. And that’s what I mean by old-fashioned, Kim. You (and the half-naked ‘stars’ who pose at the Gala) prove that the 21st century woman is a throwback!
It seems your fans are worried about you. What was happening to your poor ribs? What happens to the rest of your essential organs? Can this crushing be healthy? You were clearly finding it difficult to breathe; in fact, you admitted that you needed to take lessons for what you called “an art form.” Yes, just breathe. I saw a video of you dressing for the Gala, which meant, after cinching your waist, forcing your feet to put on very tall Perspex shoes made without heels, so that the metal of the dress wouldn’t get caught. Shoes? No, they were hooves. That detail also took me back in time: when rich Chinese women could only stagger, not walk. Do you know about them?
Your tiny waist is an example of extreme fashion. – and so were the bandaged feet. That was the disfigurement of young women that caused 1,000 years of broken bones. Girls destined for a powerful husband had their feet tightly bound from childhood. The toes were forced again and again towards the heel, again and again, so that in the end the deformed feet were horrible stumps stuffed into little embroidered “shoes” the size of handbags. Men found these helpless little stumps sexy. The point of the torture was to show that the woman was so great, so special that she never had to walk anywhere.
She wowed onlookers in the tiny Maison Margiela Artisanal dress by John Galliano at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Dare to go nude at the 5th Annual Hollywood Beauty Awards in Los Angeles in 2019 in a spectacular cutout dress by designer Thierry Mugler.
She attracted attention at the Met Gala that same year with a corseted latex dress also by Mugler, with rhinestone crystals that hung from it like drops of water.
A little more history, Kim. After the Chinese Nationalist Revolution of 1911, foot binding was banned. However, the practice did not truly end until the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Foot binding has been compared to other ways of “perfecting” the female body, such as corsets and female genital cutting or mutilation. The message was that a rich and powerful man likes to possess the body of a woman so disfigured that she can do nothing but wait for him to arrive to have sex, whether she wants it or not. Running away is not an option.
Which brings us back to you at the Met Gala in your sparkly Galliano dress, staggering around, gasping for air, and making the world gasp at your ridiculous waistline. Are you stuck in an attention-seeking cycle? Of course you are. And, in truth, most sensible people don’t give a damn. BUT, like me, they may care a lot about the influence you have on young girls. I can’t help but wonder if you ever stop for a moment – in your endless round of narcissistic grooming and money-making advertising – to realize that you’re just another prisoner of brainwashed, hypersexualized exploitation. It won’t last, you know? But in the meantime, you actively encourage young women to think that only a distorted body is beautiful.