The Kardashian Curse
A few days after the schools broke for the summer holidays, I was driving up the road, and a tsunami of young girls came hurtling towards me, heading for the beach. With an average age of twelve, faces caked in contour makeup, high-waisted cycling shorts and tiny crop tops, they bounced off the windscreen like tides of exotic birds. I felt an overwhelming sense of fear for their safety, and wanted to bundle them into the car and drive them to an empty beach where they could enjoy themselves, free from the risk of ogling eyes.
Concerned by my instinctual response to protect them and many other young people I see embodying the same vulnerability, I hope you can relate to the question of how informed their choices are when it comes to being influenced by image-led influencer culture.
Many of our young people are exploring themselves through the Kardashians and other such public figures, and being impacted by the branded type of body and lifestyle aspirations they represent. They are customers attaching themselves to the loud messaging, “present and/or adjust your body shape, contour your features and wear the following garments to mirror this gold standard image.”
“They are customers attaching themselves to the loud messaging, ‘present and/or adjust your body shape, contour your features and wear the following garments to mirror this gold standard image.’ ”
Blah blah, we know the branding is very alluring, so convincing it appears to be authentic. Fine-tuned manipulative marketing strategies to make young people believe they have control and choice over how they identify with their bodies. It’s an autocratic capitalist system that informs and instructs on standards of acceptance.
The risks associated are evident. Among them, self-worth is dependent on how well young people fit into a branded identity that delivers psychological material telling them that value is based on a constructed ideal of aesthetic and purchasable qualities.
One of the most disheartening things about the monolithic nature of this brand is the lack of individual expression. Designed for consumerism, the personalities behind it are commodities, and everything they present is an agenda for profit. Often with teams of people on the payroll, the lifestyles they present as aspirational must be paid for by the customers. It’s a form of pyramid selling where the few at the top are the only ones who benefit.
My main concern here is that young people are coaxed like babies in a cradle into believing that a business strategy has their best interests at heart. Given the amount of commodified social media content young people consume, we know there is a public health responsibility to ensure that their personal safety and mental health is protected. Control of personal identity choices by dominant brands is nothing new, so why is there still a lack of public education on the strategies they use to coerce and control the choices of our young people?
On the surface, many young people are aware that they are being seduced into becoming loyal followers to spend money. The complex web of customer profiling and profit-making strategies that sit within the business and marketing framework need to be unpacked and shared in parallel. This would provide knowledge on how brands are gaining their trust and influencing how they relate to themselves and their developing and sometimes vulnerable minds and bodies.
The funds for these resources should come from the private and public sector purse, commissioned to be developed and delivered alongside people with lived experience. Existing resources are a valuable source of reference and could be elevated through a commitment to ensure that learning and support are embedded in the school curriculum. When young people have the information, they can make informed decisions, balancing the playing field on rights and choice.
I fear that the mental health and wellbeing of our young people will only encounter further risks as the influencer media machine evolves its strategies to coerce them into thinking and believing that their products provide authentic meaning and value.