Another day, another Katastrophic Kardashian product launch – this time Kim Kardashian West’s “Kimono” shapewear line, which launched last week to widespread ridicule on social media (#KimOhNo) thanks largely to its clunky cultural appropriation. Cue a very quick rethink and a new name: Solutionwear.
It should have been obvious that naming a product line after a traditional Japanese garment, just because it happened to start with a K, wasn’t a smart move. For a start, there are plenty of other words that would have worked for this launch of yet more products aimed at the restriction and reshaping of female forms.
Perhaps Kardashian West should have thought about whether we need more of this sort of thing at all. Shapewear is an automatic purchase for many women (and indeed men) when the need to wear something slight and slinky arises. As the sturdy and structured shapes of the 50s made way for flimsier and tighter materials, a general acceptance of jiggle made way for increased stricture. And so came the horrors of spandex, body-con and casual day-to-day gym-wear.
Shapewear helps us to keep up with all this – it is a necessity if you don’t want your butt, boobs, gut or thighs to move or breathe at all. The marketing for, and prevalence of, these products says your flesh shouldn’t move if you can help it. Because who needs to be able to move freely?
Well, us. In 2019, people want to move forward. We are fed aspirations of feminist futures, equality and acceptance in life and at work almost everywhere. A kinder world for women is made a more realistic prospect in magazines, papers, TV and film every day – we can see it happening. Too slowly, but at least we are getting there. And we want to get there as quickly as we can, with no restrictions – especially not physical ones. As the singer Florence Welch pointed out in a much-cited Vogue interview last weekend, while talking about her recovery from an eating disorder. “Your body is more than a thing to be looked at; it works with you, not against you. You do not beat your own heart.”
Solutionwear may be another dreadful name, but at least it is an apt one. Solution, after all, suggests that there is a problem. If only Kardashian West and her competitors would realise that reinforcing and making money from our restriction is the real obstacle.
