Kardashian komplicity: Performing post-feminist beauty

Abstract This article explores complicity by way of beauty, post-feminist neo-liberalism and the Kardashian-Jenner family. I begin by contextualizing complicity and outlining my approach to beauty. I assert that dismissals of the family as vulgar stem from sexist and femmephobic interpretations of their hypersexual, hyperfeminine gender performances, and the genre they are most famous for: reality television. Alongside this, I point to the neo-liberal post-feminist discourses utilized by the family in their presentation of beauty work. The Kardashian-Jenners should be approached from a feminist perspective, with appropriate nuance and reflexivity. Acknowledgement of complicity (theirs and mine) provides the space to do this.