Naked Selfies in Your 30s: Why Kim Kardashian's Getting it Right

Naked Selfies in Your 30s: Why Kim Kardashian's Getting it Right

Kim Kardashian has been getting her kit off again, and all the grown-ups are telling her off. I've never watched The Kardashians, so I couldn't be classed as a fan. A boyfriend once bought me a lava lamp - I couldn't see the point of that either. What's it for, I wondered, all these senseless blobs, aimlessly bobbing about. And I felt the same about the lava lamp.

Kim's recent detractors famously include Bette Midler, Chloe Grace Moretz and Piers Morgan - all of whom I rather like. Yes, even Piers Morgan. I have a tattered copy of The Insider, that I've read about six times and I get irrationally upset when I'm reminded that he's married to Celia Walden.

So it feels strange to say, but I find myself sticking up for Kim Kardashian, because why shouldn't she take her clothes off, and why does anybody care?

Chloe Grace Moretz sounds priggish when she tweets: "I truly hope you realize how important setting goals are for young women, teaching them we have so much more to offer than just our bodies." She sounds like a prefect at Malory Towers who's caught someone snogging a boy.

Perhaps Moretz sees nudity as the new smoking, and thinks we should have a dreary disclaimer on every picture, declaring in the manner of Eeyore: "I truly recognise that I have so much more to offer than my body." Perhaps she could ring up the Magdalene Laundries for some snappy slogans from their penance library, and combine them with a little icon representing self-flagellation.

Piers Morgan takes a different tack. He says that until recently, he had no problem with Kim's nudity - however, now she's 35, it's not so much liberating, as depressing.

Actually, I'd far rather see a woman in her thirties choosing to celebrate her body, than a girl in her teens being coerced into getting her kit off by a pervy photographer or an unethical art director. Kate Moss has said she had a nervous breakdown when she was pressured to go topless as a teenager, working on a Calvin Klein campaign. She said: "But they were like 'If you don't do it, then we're not going to book you again'. So I'd lock myself in the toilet and cry and then come out and do it. I never felt very comfortable about it."

It's a sad(istic) state of affairs when we're happy to look at the body of a teenager who's been coerced into taking her clothes off, but we deride a grown woman who's actively made a choice. When a woman in her 30s takes her clothes off, you can be pretty sure it's an act of autonomy. She knows she's hot and she's a bit too old for anyone to tell her that she doesn't know her own mind. She doesn't need her dad - or a self-righteous 19 year old who's read her first book on feminism - to tell her to put some clothes on.

It's long been said that women reach their sexual peak in their 30s, and while the scientific evidence for this is now being called into question, there's definitely something to it - even if it's just down to reaching a point in your life where you feel comfortable in your own skin, you know what you want, and you're ready to shrug off what anyone else thinks.

Kim Kardashian likes getting naked and, you know what? As a woman in my 30s myself, I get that. I've had a look around, and frankly, it doesn't get better than this. Taking naked selfies in your thirties is like buying tins of beans for your bunker or going to Cuba before it's ruined by the Americans. It's like visiting Knut in Berlin Zoo before pandas become extinct, or eating all the food in your fridge before you go on holiday. It's a memento for your future self so you can looking back on when you were banging.

Kim Kardashian looks frickin' awesome. I applaud her disregard for disapproval and her refusal to be ashamed of herself - and in solidarity with Kim, I might just get my Kardashian-on.

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