Twitter lights up over mag declaring Kardashians the ‘first family’
Occasionally, yes, it tries to take itself more seriously than it has any right to do, launching “voter drives” and “information campaigns” encouraging college-aged women to vote. But such efforts always vastly underestimate women’s intelligence, either by insisting that women vote in lock-step and often with nothing other than their lady parts in mind, or by simply insulting women outright.
If the “bus full of male models” stunt doesn’t fully inform you of Cosmo‘s seriousness on the issue, perhaps this video will help enlighten you.
Anyway, suffice it to say that Cosmopolitan is not the world’s most respected resource on, well, anything, unless you’re looking for instruction on how to perform vaguely humiliating sex tips (hint: they’re always opposite the page where Cosmo implores you to be an “empowered woman”). Suddenly, however, the people who were fully supportive of Cosmo‘s political bent have taken to excoriating the magazine on Twitter and Facebook because – of course – it claimed on the cover of its latest issue that the Kardashian-Jenner clan is “America’s First Family,” and, as the social media social justice warriors have noted, we already have a “first family,” so clearly Cosmopolitan is racist.
Move over, Obamas in the White House; there’s another “First Family” taking up space in America’s cultural landscape and their names start with K.
The Kardashians sprawl across Cosmopolitan magazine’s November cover under the headline “America’s First Family,” causing outrage on Twitter and among editors of black-oriented media and websites.
But the magazine, celebrating its 50th anniversary, says calm down: The cover is just a “teasing” way to describe the Kardashians as the “huge cultural phenomenon” that they are.
Let’s parse this out, shall we?
First, Cosmopolitan has no authority to elect an actual first family without the consent of the voting public. As such, no Cosmopolitan declaration of “first family”-ness can be rightly considered definitive in any way. They cannot, independently, force the country to accept the Kardashians as their new political overlords. If they could, I, by myself, would probably undertake some sort of rebellion against the force that delegated that power to them, and I know that I would not be alone.
However, assuming that they take their cover art as seriously as their commitment to voter rights or their abject declaration of feminism, one cannot possibly, with any semblance of seriousness, believe that Cosmopolitan actually thinks the Kardashians are, in any way, a “first family” of any import outside of entertainment.
That said, if they do, Cosmopolitan has some issues, aside from their bizarre preoccupation with including food items into lovemaking.
Second, Cosmopolitan is a giant tire fire of a magazine, designed to be read in that era of a young woman’s life where she’s susceptible to the advice of others, potentially because of a perilously low sense of self-esteem, built on years of being fed conflicting messages by Cosmopolitan‘s forerunners, Seventeen and YM. No one takes what Cosmopolitan says seriously because it will likely say the exact opposite, possibly somewhere further on in the same issue.
Women should get jobs and forget about their boyfriends! Women should sacrifice their dignity in order to please their boyfriends! Women don’t need makeup! Women should buy hundreds of dollars in makeup! Palazzo pants are a thing! Palazzo pants are only worn by clowns with low-grade amnesia who think it’s still the 1970s because of a mild psychosis they’ve developed! Celebrity culture is eroding our attention span for serious things! THE KARDASHIANS ARE IMPORTANT TO YOUR VERY EXISTENCE.
I’m surprised it took people this long to discover that Cosmopolitan has literally nothing important to say about anything, but I suppose the magazine has been such a funnel for liberal group-think and post-grad indoctrination for so long that it had to commit a truly egregious crime in order to sully its otherwise stellar reputation as an intellectual and cultural resource. Fortunately, our new, pearl-clutching culture is able to provide the opportunity and the avenue – and, of course, the outraged response – that makes such a milestone ultimately worthwhile.
To me, anyway.
