Abha Shah
(Picture: Matt Writtle)Kim Kardashian has been turning heads for participating in the bad-taste new make-up trend where she gives herself a “British chav” makeover, complete with beige tide marks, universally unflattering sludge-brown lip liner and hyper-bold eyebrows. She is, to use a phrase of a friend, a wizard with a trowel.
Yet ‘chav’ — a word synonymous with poverty and vulgar taste, which was everywhere about 20 years ago — is nowhere now. The journalist Owen Jones showed comprehensively how it was used to monster people in his book Chavs.
Kardashian leapt on the trend still. To say it’s a departure from her usual glammed-up-to-the-eyeballs self is an understatement. Yet it’s Kardashian — hailed for this stunt as the ‘unintentional Queen of TikTok’ — who is really the loser of the pack.
What’s the problem, some may ask, can’t billionaires have fun too? Why shouldn’t a woman with unfathomable riches and a lifestyle beyond most of our wildest dreams have fun at the expense of the very poorest in society?
Some might say that this video is a payback for all the teasing (and worse) Kardashian gets.
Except it isn’t the same, is it? The Kardashians fight for attention and earn bucketloads from being in the world’s spotlight by flogging their wares, largely to the very people Kim Kardashian is mocking.
Aside from the obvious snobbery, her mammoth social media following - 341 million worshippers on Instagram alone - is made up of people who buy her and her sisters’ endless array of products in the hope of living some of that Calabasas magic for themselves. Is taking the mickey out of some of their customers part of the great Kardashian business game plan?
Back, though, to the snobbery, because it’s important.The word chav – though being American Kardashian is unlikely to know – is just not a word we use any more. It’s embarrassing and classist. Who is this wealthy woman, from her spacious mansion in Los Angeles, to attack people less rich and less fortunate than her?
It’s another example of how nasty tropes we thought we’d banished long ago can re-appear. It leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.
