by Sean Smith
The most seized-upon revelation in Vanity Fair was Caitlyn’s claim that she hadn’t been treated well by her former wife. She said Kris had become less tolerant, controlled the money and had mistreated Bruce. It was strong stuff. Caitlyn said, ‘A lot of times she wasn’t very nice.’ Kris was, by all accounts, ‘beyond distraught’ after these remarks.
Inside the magazine, the photographs were as glamorous as the cover. Caitlyn reclined on a sofa in a black Hervé Leger top and skirt. She sat in her dressing room in an Agent Provocateur corset. She posed confidently behind the wheel of her Porsche, a $180,000 gift from Kris, in a scarlet dress by DKNY. She compared the shoot with winning Olympic Gold in 1976: ‘That was a good day. But the last couple of days were better.’
The Vanity Fair exclusive was empowering for the transgender community. One of the most powerful effects was when 18 transgender people posted their own ‘Vanity Fair’ covers, introducing themselves to the world, proclaiming ‘Call me’ followed by their new name. Some commentators pointed out that not everyone had the money to afford the treatment and surgery that Caitlyn had undergone. They also might not be able to afford high-end designer dresses to look as good as she did.
Kim met Caitlyn for the first time when she was invited to attend the Leibovitz photographic sessions. She observed, ‘She’s beautiful and I’m so proud that she can just be her authentic self. I guess that’s what life is all about.’ Under Kanye’s influence, Kim has been able to approach important issues in a sensitive and intelligent manner. She drew attention to the plight of the many transgender men and women who didn’t have the family support Caitlyn enjoyed: ‘There’s such a high suicide rate in the transgender community, which is heartbreaking.’
Kim had touched on an issue that would become Caitlyn’s cause in the coming months – the treatment of transgender men and women, particularly the young and vulnerable, in society. Caitlyn began a series of blogs to highlight the ordeals of people fighting for survival in the world. She wrote, ‘Many trans teens are bullied and abused in high school. It’s just horrendous.’ In a second blog, she told the heartbreaking story of a 14-year-old trans boy in San Diego, who had been unable to cope with the pressures and had committed suicide.
Caitlyn drew further attention to the plight of the transgender community when she received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2015 ESPYs in Los Angeles. She received a standing ovation and delivered a powerful speech, which harked back to the hundreds of motivational speeches she had given as Bruce Jenner.
She said, ‘All across this country right now, all across the world, at this very moment, there are young people coming to terms with being transgender … They’re getting bullied, they’re getting beaten up, they’re getting murdered, and they’re committing suicide … Trans people deserve something vital. They deserve your respect. And from that respect comes a more compassionate community, a more empathetic society and a better world for us all.’
The stirring speech pointed to a future role for Caitlyn. It seemed incredible that this was the put-upon dad figure from Keeping Up with the Kardashians. She had managed to hide his true self for more than 400 episodes.
Her own television series, I Am Cait, premiered 10 days later on E!. It was another Bunim/Murray production and apparently the Jenner children decided not to take part in what they feared was just another entertainment show. His 95-year-old mother Esther featured, however, and poignantly referred to Caitlyn as Bruce throughout: ‘It’s overwhelming. I knew he was going to be dressed as a woman. I think he is a very good-looking woman, but he is still Bruce to me.’
Kim and Kanye were also involved. Kim bonded with Caitlyn over her wardrobe. They went off together to investigate her clothes and Kim told her which outfits looked chic and which had to go – presumably on eBay. The Queen of the Closet Scene hadn’t lost her magic touch when it came to styling.
The rapper told Caitlyn that her transition was ‘one of the strongest things that has happened in our existence as human beings who are controlled by perception.’ Kanye, who seldom features in his wife’s reality show, praised the way Caitlyn had overcome so many hurdles: ‘You couldn’t have been up against more. Like, your daughter [Kendall] is a supermodel, you’re a celebrity, you have every type of thing, and it was still like, “Fuck everybody, this is who I am.”’
20
Double the Power
Kim works just as hard today for Keeping Up with the Kardashians as she did when it started 10 seasons ago. She has been up for six hours by the time filming begins at noon. She wakes at 6a.m., checks North’s baby monitor by the side of the bed and then her emails on her phone. She gets tired, but is never hungover, so she hasn’t lost the knack of springing out of bed to face the day.
After popping into her daughter’s bedroom to say good morning, she is straight into her jogging gear for a run along one of the many trails that twist around Hidden Hills. It’s scenic and safe, although many of the residents do like to ride their horses first thing in the morning. If she doesn’t fancy leaving the house, she can make do with an hour in the home gym.
They never moved into the mansion in Bel Air, which they have been renovating since they bought it at the beginning of 2013. It seems likely they will sell it quietly when a potential buyer comes along who will ensure a tidy profit. Instead, they both seem to have settled on Hidden Hills as a better place to raise their family. Living at her mother’s house reminded Kim how much she enjoyed the quiet of the gated and guarded community.
Kanye often preferred to keep away from the madness of Keeping Up with the Kardashians and stay at his old bachelor home at the foot of the Hollywood Hills, which has been on the market for five years. That unsatisfactory arrangement changed when they finally bought a family property to move into in August 2014.
The fully landscaped three-acre estate was previously owned by Lisa Marie Presley, and reportedly cost them just under $20 million. It boasts eight bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, eight fireplaces, two swimming pools, two spas, tennis courts and a vineyard, a rose garden, an acre of lawn and a gated motor court. For good measure, there’s an entertainment pavilion and a separate, secluded guest house – and they bought the house next door for a miserly $2.9 million to guarantee their privacy. The main, stone-fronted manor house is actually a new-build in the French country style. This may be what the snobs of Beverly Hills and Bel Air call the suburbs, but it’s undeniably grand even for someone brought up in Tower Lane.
They can easily afford this luxury. Kim could write the cheque from her own earnings alone. Rich list figures often seem to be plucked from thin air, but Forbes suggests that from 2014 to 2015 her income has risen from $28 million to $53 million. Much of that increase is due to the success of her iPhone and tablet game, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, which launched in June 2014. It’s a brilliant concept. You create your own Kim Kardashian-like character and see yourself rise to fame and fortune. Within nine months, it had become a huge hit, with an estimated 28 million downloads and 11 billion minutes of play.
The concept of being able to update the game in real time came about by accident. Kim put a picture of herself in a bikini on Instagram the day of the launch, when she was on holiday at Joe Francis’s Mexican estate. Fans immediately thought it was part of the game and started to update their app with the swimsuit she was wearing.
The characteristics of the game mirror Kim’s own lifestyle and progress. You can customise your look from literally hundreds of style options, just as Kim does when her make-up and hair team descend on the house every day at 10 a.m. to prepare her for filming. It normally takes about an hour and a half. If she has an early meeting in Los Angeles, then she will forgo her morning run and be in the ‘glam room’, as she calls her dressing room, at dawn to be fashioned into Kim Kardashian. Her make-up artist will have hundreds of brushes and blushes ready to contour her face into her now iconic look. The result is somewhat futuristic, and one that suppresses individual beauty in favour of a flawless mask, but
it is very much of the moment.
Kim has a lot of meetings because her projects are on a conveyor belt, whizzing by like the prizes at the end of a game show. They either generate publicity and greater fame or cash in on it. The inspired ‘Break the Internet’ campaign was part of the former, based around a nude photo shoot for Paper magazine, in which she posed with a champagne glass balanced on her butt. Other front and rear shots were great fun and cheeky. They seemed much more brazen than the more innocent days of Playboy. It was just the image boost she needed before she starred in the 30-second commercial for T-Mobile’s Data Stash, which premiered during the 2015 Super Bowl.
Kim is careful to build her diary around the reality show rather than try to squeeze it in between other business meetings, pet projects or family time. The Kardashians, on the other hand, made a sort of Faustian pact to live their lives as if they were the cast of The Truman Show, the famous 1998 comedy-drama starring Jim Carrey. The main character is unaware that his life is a carefully constructed reality television show, broadcast to millions around the world. The Kardashians are well aware that they live in a constructed reality show. Kim has even made the connection to the movie herself in trying to describe what her life is like. When they are filming, they often don’t stop for lunch. One camera crew breaks and another comes in, so they never stop rolling and can capture Kim eating what her chef has prepared that day.
‘They are consummate performers,’ observed Kevin O’Sullivan, TV critic of the Sunday Mirror. ‘They know what to do in front of the camera to an excruciating extent. Sure, the Kardashians play to the cameras, but there is innately something about them that makes them born reality television stars. Their lives would be car crashes with or without the prism of reality television. I firmly believe Kim would go out and marry someone for 72 days whether or not she was on telly.’
The success of the show was never better illustrated than in February 2015, when the Kardashians signed a new four-year deal with E! reputed to be worth $100 million. They were already the highest-paid stars in reality television and this reinforced their status. The figure is probably inflated, nevertheless they do make an absolute fortune. The show will be even more female dominated than before, with the six women taking the limelight: Kim, Kourtney, Khloé, Kendall, Kylie and their mother, Kris Jenner.
All the major events of the family’s lives are chronicled. Everything is shared. No storyline could ever match the journey of Caitlyn Jenner from Olympic champion to the most famous transgender person in the world. The tenth series of Keeping Up with the Kardashians will be her last, although crossovers with her own show, I Am Cait, will almost certainly continue. The publicity surrounding Caitlyn’s transition has understandably eclipsed everything. The emotional struggle of Kris Jenner, whom she was married to for 23 years, was largely forgotten, as viewers became absorbed in which swimsuit Caitlyn would choose for her first dip in a pool as a transgender woman.
Khloé Kardashian observed that her mother was probably the most ‘jarred’ by what had happened and was left wondering if her life for all those years they were together was still validated. She was questioning, according to Khloé, whether Caitlyn was ever truly in love with her. Whatever her private thoughts, Kris has been very supportive of her ex-husband in public: ‘I think that someone following their dream is truly inspirational to a lot of people … You have to do what makes you happy.’
At the age of 58, she embarked on a new relationship with a music executive, Corey Gamble, whom she met in August 2014 in Ibiza at the fortieth birthday party for Riccardo Tisci, Kanye’s great friend and the designer of Kim’s wedding dress. Corey, who is 24 years younger than Kris, comes from Atlanta, the same home town as Kanye.
Corey is very stylish and stands out from the crowd, with his diamond earrings and shaven head. For the first time, Kris is following the lead of her famous daughters and dating a handsome and fashionable African-American. He works for Justin Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, and is usually part of the superstar’s entourage around the world.
Kris and Corey were seen enjoying dinner dates back home in Los Angeles and he was her plus one for Kim’s thirty-fourth birthday celebrations, which were held, as usual, in Las Vegas. A year later, they are still a couple, despite him being younger than Kim. Her children have found it interesting, to say the least, watching their mum date again after all these years.
On one occasion, when Kim and Khloé popped round to their mother’s house, they heard the banging of the headboard coming from Kris’s bedroom, a sign that vigorous sex was being enjoyed. The two sisters kept as quiet as possible, waiting for them to finish, so they could have a cup of tea and a visit. When everything went silent, they expected to see their mum walk into the kitchen. Instead, the headboard started banging again, as they went for round two. Kim and Khloé had heard more than enough and crept away.
Kris and Corey flew to Europe in June 2015 for a romantic break, but also to support Kendall Jenner, who was one of the catwalk stars of Men’s Fashion Week in Paris. They sat in the front row at Riccardo’s show for Givenchy and watched Kendall and Naomi Campbell vie for attention in daring outfits that seemed to have nothing to do with men’s fashion.
Kendall and Kylie were youngsters when Keeping Up with the Kardashians was first broadcast in October 2007. Kendall was 11 and Kylie just 10 when they made their debut as refreshingly normal, sometimes sulky girls. The elder one grew up to be a stunningly attractive girl who dreamed of being a model: ‘I would sit at home and have my friends take pictures of me on my little Canon camera that my mom gave me for Christmas.’
While she can’t yet match Kim’s following on social media, the gap is closing. When Kim broke through the barrier of 27 million followers on Instagram, Kendall had more than 20 million.
She has used her online presence to generate interest in her modelling career, which began at the age of 14, when Wilhelmina Models signed her. In the early years, her mother helped guide her career, but in 2013 she joined The Society management and moved into the runway world of high fashion. Their biggest coup to date was landing her the contract as the face of cosmetics giant Estée Lauder. The company shrewdly allowed her to make the announcement on Instagram and Twitter, thus immediately hitting millions of young women within the right age demographic. The slight irony in choosing Kendall is that, unlike Kim, she rarely looks like she’s wearing any make-up.
The media, which can’t bear the fact that she never seems to have a steady boyfriend, have tried to link her with Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, Lewis Hamilton and the bisexual model Cara Delevingne.
Much of her personal branding, which has been set up by her mother, consists of joint ventures with her more controversial sister Kylie. It very much follows Kim’s blueprint for commercial success with her personal clothing and jewellery lines.
Kylie, meanwhile, admitted on an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians that she had lip-fillers, which was no surprise to anyone who could see how much her face had changed recently. She also had to contend with rumours that she had a boob job at 17, claims that she firmly denied online.
Most controversial is her ongoing relationship with Tyga (Michael Ray Nguyen-Stevenson), the Vietnamese-Jamaican rapper. He apparently met her for the first time when he was the guest artist at Kendall’s Sweet 16 party. She was 14 and he was 21. At the time, he was with his fiancée, a hip-hop model and former stripper called Blac Chyna (Angela White), and the pair had a little boy, King. Kris and Kim, resembling an expensively dressed aunt, were both at the party, looking obviously out of place, as the latter politely thanked the shirtless Tyga for coming.
Neither Tyga nor Kylie confirmed anything more than a friendship. Kris Jenner was diplomatic when asked about it. Tyga lived in the same neighbourhood as Khloé, she said, and he and Kylie shared many mutual friends. It became slightly harder to conceal their true feelings when Kylie became 18 in August 2015 and he gave her a white Ferrari worth $320,000 as a birthday present.
He parked the car, tied with a red ribbon, outside the Bootsy Bellows nightclub in West Hollywood, where Kylie, with a new blonde hairdo, was celebrating with her friends and family, including her father, Caitlyn Jenner, who was meeting Tyga for the first time.
When Tyga and Blac Chyna were together, they were very good friends with Kim and Kanye and were pictured out with them. She even appeared in an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians during the ninth season. To make matters even more awkward, she is now best friends with Kanye’s ex-lover, Amber Rose.
Both Kylie and Kendall’s ongoing storylines in real life already reveal just how much more mileage there is left in the Kardashian family reality show. Kim and Kourtney are mothers in their mid-thirties, so it’s important that the younger women can bring fresh material and new characters into the family’s world.
Kourtney has, for some time, ensured that the show takes second place behind her three children in her list of priorities. As well as Mason, aged five, she has Penelope Scotland, who was born 8 July 2012. She gave birth to a second son, Reign Aston, on 14 December 2014 and, by an unusual twist of fate, he shares Mason’s birthday. She has always been single-minded and decided early on that she was always going to be home to put her children to bed and she wasn’t going to work weekends.
The roller-coaster of her relationship with Scott Disick has been one of the main threads throughout the years of the show. They always seemed a step away from getting married. He first proposed during an episode of Kourtney and Kim Take New York in 2005. She said no. When asked about their status at the beginning of 2015, he said, ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.’