There are few human experiences more satisfying than the post break-up glow up and reinvention. The choppy bob, the bleached bangs, the nose-ring, the BBL or BBL reversal, the new profile pic that discreetly shows hole – it’s almost worth the dissolution of a loving partnership just for this! It’s the real life equivalent of a movie montage in which you are the main character. And that’s just for us mere mortals! For celebrities, or more specifically, for the woman who has been collectively accepted as the main character of modern life (Kim Kardashian), it follows then that her post break-up reinvention has to go even further, has to be even more extreme. A truly successful one sees a person become the antithesis of their previous selves. One must, in the case of Kim Kardashian, become an emo.
Kim, who has never failed – not once! – when faced with the challenge of a style evolution (remember her neon phase?), is well on her way along the baddie to emo pipeline. How else would you explain these paparazzi images of her with emo/manic-pixie-dream-boyfriend Pete Davidson wearing Vans? Vans! This, from the woman who cried when she dropped her diamond earring in the ocean. The woman who insisted on wearing perspex stilettos and forgoing comfort while heavily pregnant with North, is now wearing a skate trainer!
It should be noted, of course, that this is not the first foray into emo for Van-aficionado Kim. Before she tasted true scumbro romance with Pete Davidson, back in 2007 – while Kanye was still wearing those horrendous shutter shades – Kim was getting off with early millennial internet’s favourite boyfriend, Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy, in the video for “Thnks fr th Mmrs” (this is how we all typed in 2007, it was a weird time). 15 years later, the memory of that fateful kiss has brought her right back into the arms of emo-adjacent men with Harry Potter tattoos, chipped teeth and inexplicably potent big dick energy.
Of course, the paparazzi image is just one picture, and just one shoe. But it is, this writer would argue, the first literal step into Kim’s emo-ification. After all, with a family like hers how could she avoid it? Big sister Kourtney is already well on her way to perfecting the goth-wife vibes with fiancé Travis Barker. Even North is in on the grungy fun – last year Kim told Ellen her daughter was a “full goth girl”. “North is like, goth”, Kim said. “She shops at Hot Topic. She puts fake tattoos on her face and listens to Black Sabbath.” Love that for her. Perhaps she was following in the footsteps of cousin Penelope Disick, also a full goth girlie. Love that for all of them!
Love that somewhere, in a corner of Calabasas, in the depths of Hidden Hills, the Valley Girls and baddies of yore are undergoing a transformation. Out with the mini-Uggs and those Y2K Juicy Couture tracksuits. In with the Vans, Hot Topic t-shirts, face tattoos and the boyfriends from Staten Island. Track down your Tumblr password and find the bullet belt you left at your parents’ house because when the Kardashians embrace an aesthetic, for good or for bad, it trickles down and becomes both aspirational and inescapable for us mere mortals. It is 2022 and the emoification has begun.
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