--- title: Kim Kardashian’s Butt Breaks the Internet: In Defense of Hot Moms description: We Americans like our Moms and Wives a certain way. canonical: https://time.com/3584587/kim-kardashian-butt-break-the-internet-hot-moms/ author: Claire Howorth article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-14T16:35:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:01:56.150Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Butt Out! In Defense of Hot Moms og:description: We Americans like our Moms and Wives a certain way—and only that way. og:url: https://time.com/3584587/kim-kardashian-butt-break-the-internet-hot-moms/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9ef3c1abb8a6af8d/6987685935ba6fc7b6c05464/kim-kardashian-paper-cover.jpg?branch=production&width=1089&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1089 og:image:height: 613 og:image:alt: Kim Kardashian Paper Magazine og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Butt Out! In Defense of Hot Moms twitter:description: We Americans like our Moms and Wives a certain way—and only that way. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9ef3c1abb8a6af8d/6987685935ba6fc7b6c05464/kim-kardashian-paper-cover.jpg?branch=production&width=1089&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Butt Out! In Defense of Hot Moms > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Big Money in Backsides [Watch (HLS stream): Big Money in Backsides](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/w8gIu6Ex.m3u8) (1:42)  _Published 2014-11-12. Make all the jokes you want. There are a lot of businesses playing a very specific and very lucrative endgame, if you will._  by [Claire Howorth](https://time.com/author/claire-howorth/)  ## Claire Howorth Nov 14, 2014 4:35 PM UTC  Jean-Paul Goude—Paper  by [Claire Howorth](https://time.com/author/claire-howorth/)  ## Claire Howorth Nov 14, 2014 4:35 PM UTC I’m about to be a mom. And I love Kim Kardashian’s butt. Would that it were mine, well, it would be on the cover of _Paper_ instead of sitting here writing in defense of hers. (Kim, I hope you’d do the same for me.) Would I pose glistening and naked? No. But do I think as a wife and mother Kim is beholden to some absurd notion of postnatal propriety, as [some _Glee_ cast members](http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/naya-rivera-disses-kim-kardashian-for-baring-her-butt-20141211) and other folks with wag-happy fingers seem to? No. In fact, I wish there were apron strings hanging down each cheek in that first photo—it’d be all the more winking an image. If you’re going to chastise a mother for indecency, why not get a head start and say women in general should never pose naked? [Most of them ](http://www.infoplease.com/spot/momcensus1.html)will be moms one day. It’s as if, in the words of a foolish [paragon of archaic decorum](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098300/quotes), “We can have a good time, but we cannot be wild.” We Americans like our moms and wives a certain way, for the most part. We like them in minivans and on the sidelines—spread the Jif, not the legs. Just look at our advertisements (which have come a long way, even in my adulthood). There’s the [Cadillac mom](http://www.ispot.tv/ad/75or/2014-cadillac-srx-mom-song-by-fountains-of-wayne), so chic, so pulled together, so … fully dressed. There’s the series of [LG Appliance ads](http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-moms-inner-voice-funny-dark-and-full-regrets-lg-campaign-158003)—humorously written, but nevertheless relegating moms to the kitchen, the laundry room, the home front. This is not to say we don’t want them to be _attractive_. No, we want that. We want postpartum bikini bodies and the jogging skirts that maintain them—marionettes on puppet strings, in G-strings, if you believe[ DirecTV](http://time.com/68045/sexist-commercials-directv-bourbon/). [We fetishize famous moms](http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/30/the-tyranny-of-the-sexy-mom/) throughout and after the gestational period—from bump watch to bounce back, and the faster the better. (Remember how [hideously we treated Kim](http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20748359,00.html) when she was pregnant?) We are okay with—enthusiastic about?—the classic Mom I’d Like to \[This Bleeping Acronym Is Not Allowed Here\], but even she must carry a few wholesome attributes: unconditional love, a sense of devotion, some bosomy, lipsticked comfort atop the five-inch heels. How do we _not_ like our moms and wives? We do not like them [dancing dirty](http://hollywoodlife.com/2014/01/27/beyonce-grammy-performance-slammed-parents-drunk-in-love-too-sexy/). We do not like them acting [flirty](http://www.popsugar.com/moms/Flirting-While-Married-27335600). We do not like them being lewd. We do not like them [in the nude](http://www.papermag.com/2014/11/kim%5Fkardashian.php). We don’t want moms to be _naked_\-naked, nipples that recently [breastfed a baby](http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/08/02/kim-kardashian-breastfeeding-north-west-nursing-habits/) reverted to something perverted (we have enough problems with nutritionally exposed breasts as it is). Surely a _mo-om_ (say it in your best multi-syllabic teenage voice) should not be getting a bikini wax. Or perching a crystal coupe on her behind while an arc of bubbly squirts suggestively over her head. It’s part of the overall “[mommy problem”](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/opinion/sunday/our-mommy-problem.html) that the writer Heather Havrilesky nailed just days B.B.I. (Before Broken Internet)—”You might feel like the same person deep inside, but what the world apparently sees is a woman lugging around a giant umbilical cord.” So in a few weeks, do I officially enter some sort of Sisterhood of the Sexless, whereby we stop celebrating the very thing that made us mothers in the first place? Grab the twinset and pop the chardonnay! For whatever else you can say about her, at least Kim is putting forth—very, very forth—the person she always has been, before baby and now beyond. What about when North grows up? Will she be embarrassed? Well, there are many other problems in the family tree of more serious psychological concern than Mama’s wanton nudity. As far as Kim’s body parts go for the rest of us, we’ve seen it all before, on ourselves and on her. If she wants to strip down in a puddle of sequins, baby oil and champagne, great. I’ll take a judgment-free gander. Maybe some moms will feel sexually reinvigorated or newly liberated by Kim. For anyone who prefers not to see all of Kim, make like a breastfeeding scold and look the other way. ### See Kim Kardashian's Most Memorable Magazine Covers  Kardashian was photographed by the controversial photographer Terry Richardson for her Rolling Stone cover. In the issue she talks about Caitlyn Jenner, her marriage to Kanye West and her love for the Backstreet Boys. Terry Richardson—Rolling Stone  From the #worldsmosttalkedaboutcouple to the #worldsmosttalkedaboutbutt. Kim Kardashian already got national attention for being naked when a sex tape went public in 2007, but as the new cover of Paper magazine suggests, it's still her body — not her multi-million dollar iPhone game, not her TV show, not her marriage to Kanye West — that has the power to "break the Internet." Jean-Paul Goude—Paper  Kardashian called her first Vogue cover "a dream come true," while critics accused to magazine of chasing what was trendy rather than defining it. "As for the cover, my opinion is that it is both charming and touching, and it was, I should add, entirely our idea to do it," Anna Wintour said in its defense. Annie Leibovitz—Vogue  Before Kanye and Kim posed for Vogue, they posed on the cover of the French magazine L'Officiel Hommes in 2013\. Is this just a strikingly suggestive pose or actual candid moment between now-spouses? Probably a little of both when it comes to this steamy photo shoot. Nick Knight—L'Officiel Hommes  In 2012, Kardashian graced the cover of V magazine — shot by Nick Knight, who also shot her L'Officiel Hommes cover — and defended her reality show empire in the magazine's pages by comparing it to rap music. "When rap music first came out, people were like, 'We don't understand this, what is this, it's just a fad.' But rap music is definitely here to stay, and I think reality shows have proven they are as well." Nick Knight—V Magazine  Channeling the typographic work of the iconic American artist Barbara Kruger, the cover of W magazine's November 2010 issue found Kim Kardashian (almost) bearing it all. Inside its pages, the only layer she had on was a thin coat of silver body paint. Mark Seliger—W Magazine  Kim Kardashian lands magazine covers because she's a familiar face, but that didn't matter to YRB. The magazine made her look near unrecognizable in a bob and dramatic makeup for a 2012 photo shoot that she later called "one of the most unique shoots \[she's\] ever done." YRB  Two of America's biggest style icons met in 2009 when Kim Kardashian dressed up like Barbie, who "guest edited" an issue of Australia's Kurv magazine. But it's no surprise the star would say yes to a magazine that starts with the letter K. Kurv  A 2009 shoot for Complex caused controversy when the magazine's website accidentally published an unretouched photo of Kim Kardashian. While it reignited the ongoing debate about beauty standards, Kardashian herself wasn't mad. "So what? I have a little cellulite," Kardashian later wrote on her website. "What curvy girl doesn't? How many people do you think are Photoshopped? It happens all the time!" Complex  Kim Kardashian was the most-clothed person on the cover of Prestige magazine's September 2010 issue when she posed with two naked men while looking like a sexed-up gladiator. "This might be one of my most risque covers to date!" she tweeted. Prestige  In 2012, Kim Kardashian covered New York magazine's fashion issue, which asked whether she had a place in the industry. Since then, she's only shown that the answer to that question is a resounding yes as she attended Paris Fashion Week and the Met Ball and landed that Vogue cover — a magazine that in the past has been not-so-open-minded about women with curvy figures like hers. New York Magazine ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3584587/kim-kardashian-butt-break-the-internet-hot-moms/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3584587/kim-kardashian-butt-break-the-internet-hot-moms/"},"headline":"Butt Out! 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