Keeping Up With the Reinvention of Kourtney Kardashian
Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker just put a ring on it.
The reality TV empress revealed the news on Instagram, where she posted an uncharacteristically candid photo of her and Barker embracing in what appears to be a heart-shaped maze of red roses succinctly captioned, "forever."
On Twitter, Kim Kardashian confirmed their engagement with a video zooming in on her sister's engagement ring, a sizable oval-cut diamond. Way to focus on what's important, Kim.
With Kardashian and Barker's engagement, the couple's whirlwind romance reaches a climax.
Since making their relationship public, the duo have garnered outsize attention — first, for their seemingly disparate personas, and then for Kardashian's entrée into what some have dubbed her "Hot Goth Girlfriend" era.
The buzz that has accompanied every paparazzi shot of Kardashian and Barker is an intriguing phenomenon, especially compared to the amount of attention her relationship with Scott Disick garnered.
Kardashian and Disick weren't exactly ignored by the media but onlookers never thirsted for their next appearance together with the same fervor that "Kravis" has inspired.
A good deal of our concern for the couple stems from the sharp contrast between Kardashian's style, pre-Travis, and her darker, current-day aesthetic. From Calabasas-glam to alt-glam, it sure seems like Kourtney recently discovered Hot Topic — and it's "not just a phase."
But why are onlookers so fascinated by is this evolution? If I had to guess, I'd say it partially has to do with the pressure female celebrities face to constantly reinvent themselves.
For women in Hollywood, aging is often accompanied by shrinking careers. The older a woman gets, the less "relevant" she's considered. To keep up, she must latch onto new personas, new gimmicks, new looks, to keep the public interested.
It's a trapping of misogyny that was nicely explained by — surprisingly — Taylor Swift in her documentary, Miss Americana.
"Female artists have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists," she said. "They have to, or else you’re out of a job."
Swift, who's undergone several rebirths herself, explained that she's constantly having to find new facets of her own personality that "people find to be shiny." Something her audience will find "interesting enough to entertain us, but not so crazy that it makes us uncomfortable."
From her doe-eyed breakout onto the country scene to her edgier Reputation phase (an attempt at rebranding that many derided) to her current incarnation as the folky Evermore songstress, Swift has embodied many things to many people.
The comparison between Swift and Kardashian isn't to say that societal pressure caused Kardashian to begin dating Barker. It is telling, however, that the public's ardent interest in her relationship largely revolves around how she's "changed" since she and Barker went public.
"Kourtney Kardashian’s style has done a total 180° since she started dating Travis Barker," an article on Yahoo reads.
A YouTube video chronicles the "Ways Kourtney Kardashian Has Changed Since Travis Barker."
Earlier this year, Page Six carried the headline, "Kourtney Kardashian claps back at claim that Travis Barker changed her style."
Just as we've delighted in Megan Fox's resurgence, debated Billie Eilish's Vogue cover transformation, and applauded Britney Spears's emergence from conservatorship, we've obsessed — and continue to obsess — over the novelty of Kardashian's unlikely coupling.
Clearly, there's something about women remaking themselves that fascinates us. What would our A-list heroines do if no one was watching?
