‘KUWTK’: Kim Kardashian Comparing Her Experience to Britney Spears Is ‘Distasteful,’ Fans Criticize
A lot of people dream of being famous. But the reality of fame is much less romantic than it seems. It’s lonely at the top. Famous people can’t relate to others the same way an average Joe can. There are fewer shared experiences, and often people who get close to celebrities are looking for something. Whether it’s a handout, a leg up, or something else, it must be exhausting for famous people to try and make new friends.
Nothing underscores the loneliness of fame more than a recent documentary about Britney Spears, Framing Britney Spears.
‘Framing Britney Spears’ has Kim Kardashian speaking out
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The documentary lays bare the harassment Spears suffered at the hands of the paparazzi. As a child star, Spears never knew a time when she wasn’t in the spotlight. But as she grew, the press got nastier. She was constantly followed, and criticized for out of context actions. Spears suffered multiple mental health problems, which eventually led to her father having conservatorship over her.
Although the conservatorship itself is another point of contention for Spears’ fans, the implication of the documentary is clear. Constant media hounding exacerbated Spears’ mental health issues, and eventually led to her breakdown.
The documentary was disturbing, and has brought many more supporters to Spears’ cause. Kim Kardashian is one of Spears’ new champions. The reality TV star posted about the documentary on Instagram. Kardashian compared Spears’ treatment to her own experience with the press, specifically while she was pregnant with her daughter North.
She wrote that she “was shamed on a weekly basis with cover stories that made my insecurities so painful I couldn’t leave the house for months after. It really broke me.” As for Spears, she said “No matter how public someone’s life may seem, no one deserves to be treated with such cruelty or judgment for entertainment.”
Some fans don’t think Kim Kardashian has a right to compare her experience to Britney Spears
Fans on Reddit don’t think Kardashian has a right to compare her experience to Spears. First of all, Kardashian is a reality TV star, meaning she literally put her entire life out in public for everyone to see. But that’s not why fans feel it’s an unfair comparison. Some redditors believe that the KarJen clan manipulates paparazzi and press photos to their benefit, and they have the evidence to prove it.
In fact, one fan pointed out that Kardashian admitted to using the paparazzi in her rise to fame. She specifically befriended or sought out photographers to get her image in the media. One fan thinks that Kardashian began to resent the press when she could no longer control them. “I think it flipped when she got pregnant with North and all these bad headlines were made about her weight and her looks. She got the taste of what all the others celebrities had been living forever and she hated how she couldn’t control the narrative like she always did.”
Kim Kardashian is famous for controlling her own narrative
There is ample evidence that the Kardashian Jenner family have relationships with paparazzi to ensure that the best pictures are always front and center. They attribute the mastery of the press to momager Kris Jenner. As one fan wrote of the evidence that the KarJens have paparazzi on the payroll, “this totally reinforces why i think it’s distasteful of her to bring up her own media harassment in comparison with the britney spears situation. if there’s any famous woman out there who has mastered the art of spinning the narrative and controlling their image and what’s shown, it’s kim (big thanks to kris i’m sure).”
In fact, it seems that Kardashian may not be able to stomach the level of scrutiny Spears lived under for years. When photos of a trip to Mexico were released showing cellulite on the reality TV star’s legs and thighs, Kardashian had a meltdown in front of the Keeping Up with the Kardashian cameras. As one fan wrote, “Those Mexico pics shook her to the CORE. I think we all know they were real and she was freaked out everyone was going to see them. That incident really showed me how insecure Kim truly is.”
