Imagine being a doctor or a lawyer in your home country and now you have to mop floors or work the fast food counter. Imagine having to take a live-in nanny position with an unfriendly family to send money to your extended clan back home. Imagine having to support a veteran husband and a disabled kid who requires expensive meds and care on $11.40 an hour. Imagine having to work three part-time minimum-wage jobs so you can make enough grocery money to feed your kids. Imagine having to clean toilets in a dirty bar. Imagine being on your feet all day, serving coffee to a cranky public who often yell at you, insult you, short-change you. Quick q, Kim: what kind of work do minimum wage-earners have to perform? Let me tell you: it’s a hell of a lot harder than posting a selfie of yourself on Instagram. Then there are those who do have a minimum wage job. What if they are street-involved? What if they have a mental illness? What if they are a person of colour or disabled or trans and face discrimination from prospective employers? Even those lucky enough to enjoy a baseline of white, cis-gender able-bodied privilege can sink further and further beneath the poverty line as their job search drags on and on. They send out thousands of cover letters and go around town every day, passing out their resumes, and applying for every open job they can find-the ones they’re qualified for, that is. In this trash economy, many unemployed and underemployed people spends months or years searching and searching and searching for full-time work (with good benefits an impossible dream) and would be goddamned ecstatic to land a minimum wage job. Yes, the Kardashian clan has had to deal with trauma-including the early death of their father, dealing with the public transition of a parent and Kim’s recent attack during a violent robbery-but on the whole, their lives seem annoyingly #blessed out of the gate, so broadcasting a pick-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps ethos is pretty damn rich. Reality shows about their gilded existence. She has a work ethic, sure, and has used it to build a formidable brand and business empire, yes, but based on what? Selfies. Simpson, her step-parent was Olympian Caitlyn Jenner and she was raised in ultra-luxury by stay-at-home mom Kris Jenner. In addition to the basic privileges of being a white, cis-gender, able-bodied person, she has the added benefit of being beautiful, thin (she’s only big in the trendy, socially acceptable places) and rich. Her father was a high-profile millionaire lawyer who infamously defended O.J. But she was born with the maximum amount of privilege. Kim Kardashian is a successful business woman to be sure, with a range of reality shows, apps, fashion products and books to her name. It is offensive in the extreme both in general, and, in specific, coming from Kim Kardashian. There’s some truth to that, sure, but the issue is a lot more complex than some sign peddling capitalist inspo in a bougie shop can encompass. Hard work is one way to accumulate more material goods. Late last night, Kim Kardashian snapped a pic of a sign that read “You can’t have a million dollar dream with a minimum wage work ethic” to her her jillion followers.
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