Are you tired of seeing Kim K’s butt all over your newsfeed? Well so are we. In 24 hours, Kim Kardashian tried to break the Internet…. with her butt. Back in September, Kim K did a photoshoot with Paper magazine that involved her ripping off a dress and doing a nude photoshoot with photographer Jean Paul Goude. Paper Magazine released a preview of their 2014 winter edition cover and the world went crazy. Hours later, Paper released several photos that showed Kim’s full nude frontal. Within hours, thousands of memes popped up all over the internet making fun of her butt. Krispy Kreme ad? Centaur? Peach? Chelsea Handler? We’ve seen it all.
Paper magazine’s winter issue features Kim Kardashian West’s posterior on its front page. You may be wondering what all the buzz is about, considering this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Kim’s buttocks. From British GQ cover 3 months ago to her own Instagram butt selfies, we’ve seen it all. Unlike most people, we almost couldn’t move on. We had to research and discover anything and everything about them.
As you can probably tell, Kim’s butt has taken over the Internet. People screamed that the photoshopping and retouching in this photo was almost ridiculous and that there was no way she actually looked like that. Apparently, that’s not the case, according to the director of Paper the image of Kim took “much less [retouching] than people think. That’s really what she looks like. That’s her. I would say it’s the normal amount of retouching that’s on a normal cover.”
The photographer behind the image, Jean Paul Goude, is known for creating outrageous photographs that have often faced a lot of controversy. Originally, Kim Kardashian went into the photo shoot to recreate his famous 1976 photograph of Carolina Beaumont, that features a model wearing no clothes (or pearls) and popping a bottle of champagne that somehow lands in a glass resting on her butt.
Jean Paul Goude is a French photographer who was known for dating Grace Jones and was partially responsible for launching her successful career. He helped design her album covers, directed her music videos and choreographed her live performances. Goude’s work features a long line of images that are manipulated using techniques that predated Photoshop.
Upon further research, we looked into Goude. Some articles and theories suggest Kim Kardashian as being a target for a racist photographer. Back in 1979, Goude said that “Blacks are the premise of my work … I have jungle fever.” Even going as far as to name his book Jungle Fever, which also featured Grace Jones stuck in a cage naked, with raw meat. Furthermore, many articles reference Goude’s work to Saartjie Baartman, a South African woman who lived during the late 1700s and would later become the icon of racial inferiority and female sexuality. Baartman had abnormally large protruding buttocks, and was paraded all over London as part of a “show.” The shows would emphasize Baartman’s butt and abnormal figure to symbolize “hypersexuality.” According to another article, “Kim Kardashian gets to represent black bodies that black women don’t get to represent themselves.” People are simply discovering something that has always been around: big butts.
Whether Goude’s work and portrayal of Kim Kardashian is truly racist or not, we’ll let you make your own conclusions. Regardless of the purpose, we recomend that you conduct your own research into the matter and not overlook the factor of race in Kim’s photos.
You can check out the original photos from Paper Magazine here.