INFLUENTIAL COVERS: Kim Kardashian broke the internet for Paper

Kim Kardashian is arguable one of the most famous women in the world. At the release of this cover and interview she had 25 million Twitter followers, that’s 5 million more than CNN Breaking News.

Having never really hear of the publication Paper, I believe it was this famous Kim K cover that put the magazine on the map. This issue’s cover is influential in its showing of celebrity influence in today’s society. Kim has an inescapable media presence and while come may see her as a ’feminist entrepreneur pop-icon’ others may arguably she her as personifying narcissism and uncheck capitalism.

Kim boasted she was going to break the internet and she done just that with her Jean-Paul Goude shoot courtesy of Paper. The cover has since had flood of coverage and commentary. I think this image is iconic as it shows what people of today are aiming for. Kim was described by Time magazine as ‘the first lady of #fame’ and was also described as ‘beautiful in an exotic, totally exaggerated way’. The whole basis of Kim’s fame and influence is a modern construct, rising to fame through secret tapes and social media – ultimately becoming a media phenomenon. The cover is the perfect example of popular culture and going viral. Print, radio and TV all jumped on the pictures, reporting it as a major story for a solid two weeks. It was the ongoing discussion from late night talk shows to memes.

It is also so influential as go back 10 or 15 years ago, and you would have never seen a cover so provocative.

Paper is a small-circulation magazine, one that many people hadn’t heard before however the traffic on the site skyrocketed. On 13 November, one day after the full story appeared, Paper’s traffic measured nearly 1% of the entire web browsing activity in the US. This shows what an influence celebrities and celebrity culture has in today’s tech obsessed society.

References:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/17/kim-kardashian-butt-break-the-internet-paper-magazine

http://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/news/celebrity/2014/11/12/kim-kardashian-naked-for-papermag-break-the-internet

http://www.papermag.com/tag/Break-The-Internet