No One Is Better at Being Looked at Than Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian always knows what people want to see. In the early 2010s, what people wanted was Kim, and Kim obliged. She was everywhere: on her show, Keeping Up With the Kardashians; on other people’s shows; on magazine covers; and, mostly, on the internet. There, she built an apparatus of self-surveillance out of newly available technology and newly acquired cultural hunger for unfiltered celebrity. Other stars were on social media, sure, but no one used it quite like Kim, endlessly and seemingly without shame. The effect was a magic trick: Kardashian had tens of millions of followers, and each felt like they were getting a special peek into a charmed world. Her feeds from Paris Fashion Week 2016 are a representative sample—a pacifying stream of cream and white, diamonds and lace, outsize wealth made as banal as breakfast. Here is Kim getting ready. Here are Kim’s outfits. Here is Kim’s engagement ring, a gift from her then-husband, then known as Kanye West, its stone as clear as glass and as big as a grape.