I only very recently gave in to the Kardashian franchise. For the longest time, I had no interest in America's most infamous family, and couldn't even tell Khloe from Kendall (gasp). But, when news of Kris and Bruce Jenner's divorce was released and every social media site that I'm on collectively panicked, I became curious. Seemingly everybody was very concerned about what to me was just another Hollywood divorce scandal. So, I decided to end my distance from the Kardashian crew and give into the fandom. Lucky for me, "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" is streaming on Netflix, just waiting to be binge watched.
After watching a couple of episodes, I was hooked. I'm not sure if everybody who watches and loves "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" enjoys the show ironically or earnestly. Personally, I have never really liked anything ironically, and I'm not sure I even know how to pull that off (I'm nowhere near hip enough to do anything ironic). I am genuinely enjoying "The Kardashians," despite my mother's best efforts to convince me that it's an absolutely horrible show. I've hopped on the bandwagon. I can understand the panic over the Kris and Bruce divorce.
Of course, there are plenty of Kardashian haters out there. I'm not going to try to claim that they have no basis for their distaste. Yes, perhaps the family hasn't actually done anything to deserve their fame. They do have more money than they seem to be able to appropriately handle. I have seen more physical fights on their show than I really needed to see, and I have laughed out loud at some interview lines that were not intended to be funny.
But at the same time, "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" is a fun show to watch. I began watching the show expecting to hear the Kardashians do nothing but trash talk each other. This proved untrue. Sure, they have their moments when they aren't the nicest people in world, but for the bulk of the show, it's obvious that they all have each other's best interests in mind. In a way, it's kind of sweet.
Of course, every Kardashian, at least in front of the cameras, acts in a completely ridiculous and over-the-top manner. That's what keeps the show entertaining. But, the reason that watching "The Kardashians" hasn't made me hate the whole Kardashian clan is that the outlandish things they do don't seem malicious. In the last episode I watched, Kris became concerned that the family wasn't eating healthy enough, so she decided to purchase several live chickens to keep in the backyard, so her kids could always have fresh eggs. This was obviously absurd. Anybody could have called that Kris' plan to take care of chickens and wake up every morning to collect their eggs was not going to work out. The whole family was in a panic. Khloe tried to revolt by putting the chickens in her mom's bathtub. It was chaos. And while the episode certainty wasn't the most profound hour of reality television, it was definitely entertaining and pretty harmless.
The Kardashians are the family that some of us love to hate while others hate to love. Some of us (me) fall into both camps. As much as we love to make fun of them, people care about what they do. Their fights, marriages, divorces, and three-hour jail sentences are all newsworthy because we're all dying to know about them. Right now, the Kardashians seem to be pop culture's favorite guilty pleasure, and I'm more than happy to embrace that.
Rebecca Hutchinson is a freshman majoring in international relations. She can be reached at Rebecca.Hutchinson@tufts.edu.
