Not unlike a thousand other columnists, I have been forced to reflect on the year that has passed over the past few weeks. But in this case, it’s because my end-of-year work party has set a costume theme: to come as the thing that best represents 2014.
Faced with this dress code, ideas pinged about my brain like a deflating balloon. Then said balloon landed, limp, on an area large enough to hold not only its sorry rubber remnants, but a few extra things like an airline meal and an iPad too. It landed on Kim Kardashian’s butt.
Why not dress up as Kim Kardashian’s oiled-up derriere for the office Christmas party? It was, after all, the thing that “broke the internet” in 2014, which is, I guess, the opposite of “winning the internet” – a popular term on Facebook circa 2007.
If you’re reading this confused, I’m referring to the magazine cover on which Kardashian slathered on some oil, got her kit off and balanced a champagne glass on the top of her purposefully protruding rear.
The photo in question revealed that not only is she delightful company (signalled by a slight twinkle in the eye rather than her usual dead-eyed duck face), she can also double as a handy mobile credenza at parties. Good on her. Versatility is the name of the game in the workplace these days. Kim’s clearly doing life right.
Recreating this glorious moment in art and life through the medium of fancy dress was my aim, and then I remembered a costume must be practical enough to ensure one can still hail a taxi while wearing it at three in the morning. It’s a gutsy cab driver who picks up someone dressed as an oversized arse, happy to have their back seat smeared in buckets of Reef Oil tanning lotion at the end of it. Idea scrapped.
And then I got sad. Sad because when pressed to come up with a highlight of 2014, I didn’t think immediately of some of the good things that have happened. What of Malala Yousafzai winning the Nobel peace prize, or the Rosetta spacecraft landing on a clump of rock somewhere in space?
Instead, all my mind’s roads led to Kim. I’ll admit I can’t take all the blame for going straight to the gutter. There hasn’t been much to have fun with this year. Ebola. Airline disasters. Gaza. Isis. I’ve also noticed that this year more than any other, my ears prick up at the horror stories rather than the happy endings.
This year’s world events seemed disproportionately weighted towards the tragic, sad and awful. So maybe there is a role for Kim K’s arse in this messed-up world – as shallow (or bloated) as that seems. Perhaps Kim has done a community service of sorts by adding her weight-in-bum to balance the news scales and offer respite from the relentlessly negative stories that have dominated. Maybe the Great Bum Moon of 2014 is the perfect panacea for us all.
PS. While over the moon (boom tish) at the idea of dressing as our saviour Kimmy K, I eventually chose to go as Dr Geoffrey Edelston in the yellow suit on the day he proposed to his girlfriend at the Melbourne Cup. Geoffrey getting down on one wobbly geriatric knee was the highlight of an otherwise awful day where multiple horse deaths showed racing up as the increasingly revolting sport it is.
Plus Geoffrey’s suit is so 2014: a combination of horror and farce. That about sums up the year, I reckon. So what about you? What would you dress as?
