Had enough of Kylie Jenner yet? Well, tough — she's making it impossible to ignore her. Yesterday, the youngest Kardashian-Jenner stepped out for New York Fashion Week wearing a mint-hued wig crafted by hair artist and Instagram star Tokyo Stylez. The look, which I actually kind of love, comes hot on the heels of an interview in The New York Times about her beauty routine (which we covered), the launch of her app and website (which we also covered), and a blonde makeover (which, you guessed it, we covered).
In fact, in the past three weeks, we have covered Kylie Jenner a total of 12 times across the site. And why exactly is that? No, it's not because we are on the Kardashian payroll, as many of you like to speculate. If that were the case, I would be on a private island somewhere sipping mojitos, trust me. It's because Jenner is perhaps one of the savviest 18-year-olds on the planet. By embracing social media and using it strategically, she's managed to make herself not only perennially relevant to the cultural discourse, but also push her own agenda and promote herself in the most efficient way. Who needs PR when you have Instagram?
It's not just her constant selfies that keep her at the top of the celebrity heap. Her non-stop makeovers, from hair to makeup, are her weapons of choice. By stepping out in a new look what seems like every week (sometimes every day), she guarantees that the media (hi there) has to cover her. Gone are the days when a Jennifer Aniston hair trim made the cover of a celeb weekly. As digital media and its insatiable need to create content with an ever-increasing amount of daily posts keeps growing, Jenner and her sisters are the ones answering the siren call for more "news." They're feeding the beast, as they say.
Of course, it's entirely possible that Jenner just really likes to change things up. I know I get a boost of confidence when I get a fresh 'do or slap on a different lipstick. Jenner even told Yahoo! Beauty in an interview last night that she changes up her look so much because, "It affects my attitude...it makes me feel super-confident.” But beneath that youthful urge to reinvent oneself (which I definitely did back in the day with a jar of Manic Panic and sloppily applied liquid liner — I was so badass, guys), there is a carefully crafted strategy. How else to explain the Kardashian domination of the past few years? As practically everyone likes to point out, they really don't have the conventional talents that used to be required to reach their level of fame — acting, singing, dancing, writing. By the old mandates, they should have faded into obscurity a long time ago.
But by extending their 15 minutes of fame into what seems like an infinite stretch in the relevancy race, they continue to be a part of the celebrity landscape. As long as they keep reinventing themselves, we will continue to cover them. The new celebrity is now expanded to include "influencers" — people who dress really well and market themselves better than most corporations with gazillions of $$$ and consultants can even dream of.
It's gone from being a car wreck you just can't look away from to a sophisticated PR machine that makes you want to keep up with them — be it to comment on how they are the dredges of humanity or to say how gorgeous Kylie is, yas kween, all of the heart emojis. So like it or not, Kylie and her kindred are not going anywhere anytime soon. See you next week, Kylie, with whatever new hair color/beauty product/app/existence you've cooked up for us.
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