This essay might trigger you. And I get it. Years ago, I would have mocked this title. But now, I’m putting myself in the firing line. I’m doing it because, for all of history, women’s liberation has been relentlessly thwarted by women tearing each other down. And I believe we can collectively end this narrative. Now.

21ˢᵗ Century beauty has been dominated by six women. And years ago, when Kris Jenner and her daughters Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, Kendall and Kylie would come up in conversation, I would (like most women I know) roll my eyes. I would pick from the bountiful buffet of criticisms covering beauty, sexuality, wealth, ambition, marriage, parenting, cultural appropriation, body image, privilege, social media and feminism to feel united with my fellow women who were criticising the Kardashians. It felt easy because they deserved my judgements. Right??

Working with teenage girls, it felt like the Kardashians were the shiny billboard for unrealistic beauty standards that I needed to personally tear down to protect a girl from spiralling into an eating disorder. I fed this fear by using disparaging words to discourage a girl from following them.

Until one day, I was having lunch with 16-year-old Olivia who quickly became quiet after I called Kim Kardashian superficial. We sat in an awkward silence until Olivia finally asked me, “Did you know Kim is studying to be a lawyer? And helps free people from prison.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, you should watch the show. Or follow her.”

“Doesn’t she post a lot of sexy bikini photos?”

“Sure, but then in her next post, she’ll be pushing a governor to get someone off death row.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah, it’s cool. She does both.”

I was feeling confused and fighting the instinct to be impressed by Kim. “Bikinis and criminal justice reform?”

“Yeah! So cool, right?”

Olivia’s use of the word “powerful” particularly grabbed my attention. The Kardashians are undoubtedly some of the most powerful women in the world. All five sisters rank in the top 20 of the most followed people globally, collectively amassing about 1.56 billion followers on Instagram [at the time of writing]. It’s impossible to get to that level of influence through beauty alone, but it’s also a hard truth to swallow that, historically, a woman’s beauty and sexuality have been effective tools to garner power. Within my own identity, I had a history of hiding both. I thought that playing into the male gaze is what you did if you weren’t “smart,” and with rampant sexual violence, harassment and objectification, I thought hiding this part of myself was also the safe thing to do.

Olivia was giving me smart perspective… and triggering me.

Leaning into the discomfort, I secretly started watching the reality show in the same way that I binge eat snacks at night and never talk about it with adult women. But with teenage girls, I was having depth-filled conversations about each episode that were shattering the judgy glass ceiling I had created for women. In therapy, I started confronting the vicious stories I had told myself about my own beauty, body and sexuality, and eventually found myself sitting in a pile of metaphorical broken glass. I was choosing to take those shards of glass and throw them in the trash… instead of stabbing another woman with them.

Looking at how the Kardashian conversation intersects with patriarchal narratives, race, class, capitalism and intersectional feminism, I found that I had been assigning blame to individuals rather than the larger, harmful systems that suck all of us into an unconscious cycle. The more I researched and talked with women and girls about the Kardashians, I found myself questioning the larger societal narrative of how women treat women and what we’re modelling for teenage girls. I started to re-perceive the Kardashians through a compassionate lens of it’s so hard to be a woman rather than my own “superior” judgements.

It started with Kim Kardashian’s sex tape. Instead of rolling my eyes about how it made her famous, I began to hear Kim, with empathy, talk about how humiliating that experience was. I would have hidden away in shame for the rest of my life. But not Kim. She managed to leave marriages that didn’t honour her, create a billion-dollar business, go to law school, raise four kids, executive produce and star in a hit TV show, laugh at herself on Saturday Night Live, start a multi-million-dollar private equity firm, survive the trauma of being tied up and robbed at gunpoint and wholeheartedly amplify her sisters’ success. On top of it all, Kim has chosen a controversial cause that no celebrity has put their name on like she has, working with both American political parties to enact progressive policies addressing prison reform. Not the normal career trajectory for any woman, let alone a woman who had a sex tape leaked without her consent. What a triumph?! Except I never hear people mention these things when they’re talking about Kim Kardashian.

I’ve heard a lot of commentary on Kim’s childhood privilege, which is legitimate, but I’m not sure if being Paris Hilton’s closet organiser for three years and having a dad famous for defending an alleged murderer is the golden ticket we all think it is. There are many people who’ve grown up with a lot more privilege than Kim, and they haven’t chosen to do anything with it. Within my own exploration, I was finding it hard to discuss the Kardashians because people had negatively latched onto a rumour or something the women did in their 20s. I would hate to be known for my 21-year-old choices, and thankfully like the Kardashians, I’ve grown a lot over the years. But no one wanted to discuss their evolution with me.

For example, I was so bothered by Kylie Jenner’s incredibly sexy photos, and I found myself getting sucked into demoralising conversations on what women should or shouldn’t be doing with their bodies. I realised that with the time and energy that women spend judging other women’s alleged plastic surgery, we could solve world poverty. Looking in the mirror, I conceded that I needed to spend time dealing with my own body issues. I had to deeply internalise the truth that I define my beauty – no one else has that power. Doing this vulnerable, healing work, deactivated my triggers so successfully that now I see Kylie popping out of her dress next to Timothée Chalamet at the Oscars, and I’m like, “Get it girl!”

Even when there have been valid critiques of the Kardashian’s choices, I realised that I was trapped in a perfectionist mindset. I had been agitated by their enormous wealth, but then I felt relief when I heard that they make substantial donations to non-profits because that’s what a ‘good’ woman would do. But then I also learned that they keep a lot of their charitable support private, because when it’s public, they’re criticised as performative, proving once again that there’s no winning for women in this game. I realised how much I’ve subscribed to the idea that there’s a ‘right’ way for women to be, and clearly, it’s impossible to achieve. We need to end the game. The truth is that we’re all flawed human beings, myself included. But unlike a lot of women I know, the Kardashians are very open about their flaws, mistakes and struggles.

Both Kendall and Kourtney have encouraged their sisters toward therapy where it’s clear they’ve been doing some personal work. Khloe has endured so many public tragedies from nursing her cheating husband Lamar Odom through nightmare overdoses to enduring multiple infidelities from Tristan Thompson. And you know what Khloe did after Tristan’s mother unexpectedly died? She took Tristan’s disabled brother into her own home and cared for him. And since Khloe has found herself free from men’s terrible choices, she has shared her pain vulnerably, undoubtedly helping other women feel less alone. I started realising that the Kardashians have the striking courage to show us their human flaws, receive endless criticism and not be destroyed by it.

I updated 16-year-old Olivia on how I had been finding myself applauding the Kardashians in a spirit of women supporting women, and she exclaimed, “Yes! I’m so done with the mean girl energy. No one’s perfect – we need to cheer each other on.” She smirks. “You know who’s great at that?”

I smile, “Kris Jenner?”

Olivia lights up. “Yes!”

I laugh, “I know. I’ve been really taken by Kris’ loving positivity. She celebrates and cheers her daughters on with such enthusiasm. One daughter succeeding at this level would be extraordinary, but all five?!”

Olivia nods, “Yeah, we should be studying her.”

“So why do women criticise instead?”

Olivia thinks for a while. “Maybe the Kardashians push the edges of what women think they should be.”

Her words hit me in the gut. Olivia is right. The Kardashians both uncomfortably uphold and fiercely shatter so many of the ‘shoulds’ that suffocate women and girls. And if they were men, I honestly believe they would be considered heroes. There’s no ‘mean girl’ equivalent with men. Men can make mistakes and it’s no big deal. Men can do terrible things and get promoted. But as much as men dominate our world that squashes women into ‘perfect good girl’ behaviour, women still choose to enforce it. This patriarchal system invisibly works within us like a sneaky poison and spreads like scandalous gossip.

I find it interesting that women spend so much time hating the Kardashians but haven’t noticed that these six women don’t spew hate back. In watching the show, I kept noticing how they’ve found freedom in ignoring the haters, following their own path and expressing a lot of gratitude along the way. I learned that when teenage girls witness adults degrading and invalidating these powerful women, they see a world where ambition isn’t worth it. They don’t want to put themselves out there, because if they make big swings toward success (like the Kardashians do), they’ll be picked apart for anything and everything. But at a remarkable level, the Kardashians have had to let go of what people think of them. I believe that’s what makes them powerful. And I wonder, what if women weren’t so scared of being judged? Scared of being disliked? What could we collectively accomplish?

Notably, these six women have succeeded despite many questionable male relationships that could have easily decimated their story. Men that were considered more powerful than them until these women left them in the dust. I have grown to see the Kardashians as a close-knit world of motherhood and sisterhood, full of feminine power that challenges the status quo and writes a riveting story that clearly we are all paying attention to. But I ask, are we cheering them on?

In my work now, leading women and girls’ empowerment workshops, I’ve learned that I can generate positive change when I create spaces where women and girls feel safe to be imperfect, which happens when they don’t feel judged. To cultivate that, I need to listen and seek understanding first. So, when I sit down with the Kardashians someday (Kris, I live in LA and I’m free next week), I will be asking: What do you need? How can I support you? Some might scoff at these questions – these women have everything – but one thing they definitely don’t have is their fellow women’s heartfelt support. They have things like our attention, envy, judgement, dollars and fascination, but what if women actually considered the Kardashians our teammates in shattering glass ceilings?

Someone’s criticism has never made me feel inspired or brave. But a supportive community of women having my back and cheering me on? That is the golden ticket that has helped me heal, grow and expand my own power. And instead of policing how women and girls should live, I now make space for all of it – the messy, the sexy, the brilliant, the broken and the powerful. I believe that change starts with my individual choices. We all have choices. We get to decide: Are we going to keep the oppressive cycle of judgement alive or are we going to shatter it… together?