If you know nothing else about Kim Kardashian, you know that she is very, very famous. Some would say that's all you need to know. At press time, she has 25 million Twitter followers, about a million less than Oprah Winfrey and nearly 5 million more than CNN Breaking News. Her Instagram account, where she is a prolific purveyor of selfies, is the site's third most popular. You can't walk through a supermarket without glimpsing her on a multitude of tabloids whose headlines holler about her relationships, her parenting style and the vicissitudes of her ample curves. But she has also graced the covers of highbrow fashion bibles like W and Vogue; with her now-husband, Kanye West, she appeared on the latter above the hashtag #worldsmosttalkedaboutcouple, creating a furor that made it perhaps the #worldsmostcontroversialcover.
Her millions-strong popularity and inescapable media presence have made her grist for think pieces galore. She is variously seen as a feminist-entrepreneur-pop-culture-icon or a late-stage symptom of our society's myriad ills: narcissism, opportunism, unbridled ambition, unchecked capitalism. But behind all the hoopla, there is an actual woman -- a physical body where the forces of fame and wealth converge. Who isn't at least a tad curious about the flesh that carries the myth?
Unlike most people, she looks exactly the same in person as she does in photographs or on television, with one exception: she is smaller than she appears in images, with tiny, almost doll-like ears and feet and hands. Everything else about her seems amplified, tumescent. Her black hair is thicker than any you have ever seen, her lips fuller, her giant Bambi-eyes larger, their whites whiter, and the lashes that frame them longer. If some of this is the result of artificial enhancement -- does anyone else have eyelashes that resemble miniature feather dusters? -- none of it seems obviously ersatz. But that's not to say it looks real, either. She is like a beautiful anime character come to life.
As soon as she arrives at the hostess podium of the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills, where we meet for our interview, a young fan who appears to be in her late teens or early twenties accosts her. The fan has been running to catch (keep up with?) Kardashian; she brings with her a breeze. "Will you take a selfie with me, Kim?" she pants. (This is what fans asks the High Priestess of Instagram -- autographs are so last century.) She obliges, leaning in for the picture and striding away almost before I can blink. "She's gonna post it," Kardashian says wryly. "I bet it's posted right now." Later, she will tell me that she's "not really a filter person," and that she doesn't generally use them when she publishes her many selfies. As she talks, I notice that her skin, which is the golden color of whiskey, is free of wrinkles, crow's feet, laugh lines, blemishes, freckles, moles, under-eye circles, scars, errant eyebrow hairs or human flaws of any kind. It's like she comes with a built-in filter of her own.
With its enveloping green leather booths and twinkling white garden lights, the Polo Lounge is a setting that lends itself to intimacy. Kardashian, who is wearing a monochromatic champagne-colored ensemble (Margiela bodysuit, Chloé silk pants, Lanvin silk coat), gives off a cozy vibe herself. She leans forward while she talks, resting her cheek in the palm of her hand as though she's chatting with her closest girlfriend. She tells me that the Kardashian clan is currently a week into filming season 10 of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, which she has called "the best family movie ever," never mind the rampant speculation, in early 2013, that season 9 would be her last. I'm surprised to hear that they still enjoy the process, since your typical American family would no longer be on speaking terms. "We're kind of obsessed with each other," she explains.
Today, a day off, she spent at a pumpkin patch with West, whom she repeatedly calls Kanye -- she clearly enjoys saying his name -- and their 16-month old daughter, North. They arrived at the farm unbothered by photographers, a rarity in the circus that is her life ("literally every single day there's about ten cars of paparazzi literally waiting outside our homes"). It wasn't long, however, before the paparazzi had surrounded them. "I couldn't really pick out our pumpkins, and [North] couldn't really enjoy it," she says. After a moment, perhaps concerned that she has come perilously close to complaining about her fame, she adds matter-of-factly: "You just have to not care. You just have to say, 'This is our life, and it is what it is.'" Her delivery is Zen-like, almost affectless, as it is on the show. "All my friends tell me the world could be coming to an end, and I'm always so calm," she says, opening a packet of Equal. She empties its contents into a glass of passion fruit iced tea, then fastidiously bites granules of sweetener off her manicured nails.
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