Why No One Can Make Up Their Mind About Kim Kardashian’s Nipple Bra
I’m almost certain that you saw Kim Kardashian’s nipples this week.
But perhaps you didn’t actually? Because Kim’s into fake nipples now. Ideally, ones that are inserted into her new Skims bra.
If you have not a single scooby about what I’m talking about, please watch this video:
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When the video first dropped, so many people – myself included – thought it was a piss-take. A skit likely co-written by a Saturday Night Live pal of the Kardashian fam. I mean she’s never promoted any other underwear with a classroom lecture about climate change?
But it turns out, the bra is 100% real and retailing on Skims.com for $120.
The reality of expensive fake nipples floating around on celebrity-endorsed corners of the internet has everyone confused. Are we meant to be angry about this? Is this taking steps forward to backwards for the body positivity moment? Is it okay if we’ve joined the waitlist to get our own ultimate push-up nipple bra?
I’m not sure if Kim knew how much of a tizzy she was about to send us into with this release. There’s no question that she’s an e-commerce marketing wizard – selling out of stock non-stop across her businesses – but when it comes to the watercooler conversations that dribble down from a product drop like this.
The major dilemmas springing forward from these faux nipples are twofold: Is it good for nipples to be on-trend? And, where do we go from here?
Regarding the first, people are quick to be up in arms about body shapes floating in and out of fashion. We saw it with the rake-thin models of the problematic ‘heroin chic’ era and then we saw it again with the rise of the big-bootied preference (spearheaded by the likes of Kim and her sisters), followed by the ‘strong not skinny’ ideal of lump-less bodies that took hours in the gym to sustain. I don’t think that this rhythm is a healthy one for us to be in by any means, but I do think it’s an inevitable beat, and compared to entire body shapes being ‘in’ or ‘out’, nipples feel like a fairly harmless focus.
Besides, before Kim declared nipples to be ‘on trend’ this week, women were often going above and beyond to conceal their nipples. Sticking on pasties or shoving a cotton pad in their bra to keep their nips out of sight. So perhaps not restricting the nipple from making an appearance in your OOTD is freeing in its own way.
But as we always should, we need to interrogate the nipple that’s being faked here.
You see, the faux nip on Kim’s Skim’s bra is a particular brand of nipple. It’s dead in the centre of the bra, pointing optimistically up and straight. It’s small. It’s pert. It’s the most desirable version of a nipple you could have shooting through your shirt.
It is very clearly a ‘hot’ nipple.
The very fact there’s not a puffy, wide, flopping down or hairy nipple version of this bra does mean that women will see this bra and think, “Ah. That’s what my nipples are supposed to look like”. And that I don’t love, but it does bring us to our second dilemma: Where do we go from here?
While I don’t love to take a nipple-sized issue and snowball it into something much bigger, I do think it could be a slippery slope. If we’re marking these nipples as the ideal then it doesn’t seem too far fetched that clothing lines could release garments offering other ideal body bits.
Boxers with an inbuilt bulge. Tops fitted with restrictive corsetry to snatch your waist. Swimwear that smoothes out your labia to a perfect Barbie-doll consistency.
Oh, wait. All of those already exist.
It seems that Kim isn’t the first to profit off a body-altering piece of clothing, and I’m sure she won’t be the last either. She just has a platform so large that she can get everyone talking about the ethics of an over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder in an instant.
And I’m glad the conversation has started. I’m afraid I won’t be closing that chat anytime soon because I think interrogating what’s going on around us is almost always a good idea, and I also don’t have an answer for you.
Buy the bra. Don’t buy the bra. Free your nipples. Cover them up. You need to do what feels right for your body. Regardless of what I or Kim Kardashian tell you.
Image credit: @kimkardashian Instagram