SHE FAMOUSLY IMPLIED the Kardashian sisters were ‘double-agents for the patriarchy’, but that doesn’t mean Jameela Jamil is completely devoid of empathy when it comes to the Calabasas clan.
In response to a series of posts Khloé Kardashian shared on her Instagram account over the course of the last 24 hours, Jameela lamented the external factors which brought Khloé’s musings to the fore.
Sharing a screenshot of one of Khloé’s posts which read “2 Things A Girl Wants: 1) Lose weight. 2) Eat’, Jameela expressed regret over the sentiment.
This makes me sad. I hope my daughter grows up wanting more than this. I want more than this. Sending love to this poor woman. This industry did this to her. The media did it to her. They fat shamed her into a prison of self critique. Dear girls, WANT MORE THAN THIS. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/RFkb0GzxZY
— Jameela Jamil (@jameelajamil) January 10, 2019
“This makes me sad. I hope my daughter grows up wanting more than this. I want more than this. Sending love to this poor woman,” Jameela wrote on Twitter.
This industry did this to her. The media did it to her. They fat shamed her into a prison of self critique. Dear girls, WANT MORE THAN THIS.
Given Jameela’s relatively checkered history with the Kardashians – she once told Kim that she was a ‘terrible and toxic influence on young girls’ – the public were unsure as to whether Jameela’s well wishes were genuine.
Indeed, it wasn’t long before some media outlets got wind of the tweet, and claimed that Jameela was ‘calling out’, ‘hitting out’ and ‘slamming’ Khloé for sharing a weight-related post with her Instagram followers, who number in excess of 84,000,000.
Discovering that she had been pitted against another woman with whom she was genuinely attempting to empathise, Jameela addressed the outlets responsible for that particular narrative.
“To the press outlets that said I “slammed” “called out” “came for” “hit out at” Khloe in this post. You suck,” she wrote 12 hours after the initial post.
You’re trying to make a woman of colour look violent and aggressive when I could not have been more empathetic. I was criticizing the fat shaming media.
For months, Jameela and the Kardashians have been depicted as being at opposite corners of the figurative boxing ring.
As Jameela continues to promote the iWeigh movement, the Kardashians continue to promote appetite-suppressant products, and so on and so forth.
And yet if we are to take Jameela’s body-positive rhetoric at face value, it would make sense that she would – on many levels – empathise with Khloé and her siblings.
The Kardashians didn’t create an image-obsessed society; it existed long before their rise to fame in 2007, and while Khloé ultimately helps to perpetuate the cycle, that doesn’t mean she herself isn’t as big a victim as anyone else.
There are few women documented as consistently as the Kardashian sisters. As such, it’s no surprise Khloé displays signs that she is vulnerable to an exceptionally damaging narrative that suggests a woman’s worth is measured solely by her dress size.
Jameela’s tweet identified the juxtaposition, and she attempted to connect with Khloé on a personal level, blaming a force which has always been greater than both of them.
I’ve no doubt Jameela will continue to call out the Kardashians when they attempt to ‘sell self-consciousness’ to their female following, but would wager she will feel compelled to empathise if they happen to display signs of that same self-consciousness due to factors at play long before their rise to fame.
