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June 22, 2012 | 19 notes

Women are sexualised and objectified and, on the evidence of the pictures on this cover, they are happy to be so. And therein lies the danger of the blurred boundary between fantasy and reality. Girls and women cannot and should not be expected to emulate these images in order to be valued. We are already seeing the social consequences of these prevalent and pervasive expectations: levels of lack of body confidence have soared in recent years, as have eating disorders and sexual crimes against women. Kardashian is financially astute, and will, we can imagine, have been paid well for her photo shoot. But images like this, especially repeated, ubiquitous images, create a damaging downward spiral. We have so grown used to these poses, reproduced as they are on covers even of many a “women’s magazine”, and mimicked on endless Facebook profiles, many of them by very young girls, that we expect them and accept them unquestioningly. All of this is doing untold psychological damage; we need to take stock of what we are inflicting on our young people. Why Zoo’s Kim Kardashian cover is wrong | Helen Wright | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk