Around 20 years ago, Kim Kardashian appeared alongside Paris Hilton, organized her closet, and was frequently introduced as her assistant. Paris was the star. Kim was in her orbit. Today, the former supporting player has built an empire that forces even those who despise the Kardashians to acknowledge her ability to understand the world we live in.

Is she the greatest influencer in history? There is no definitive measure to settle that debate. But if we consider the transformation of a personal life into a platform for entertainment, consumption and power, it is difficult to leave her out of the conversation. Kim helped establish a profession that millions now pursue, including some who make a point of saying they cannot stand her.

That is the trajectory Citizen Kim: The Woman Who Created the Future, by Jonathan Van Meter, sets out to investigate. Scheduled for an American release on October 27, the authorized biography declares its ambition in its subtitle: to present Kim as “the woman who created the future.” I have not read the book yet, but the author’s interview with The Hollywood Reporter offers a discussion that goes far beyond family revelations.

After all, how can someone so exposed create the impression that she remains misunderstood? And how does an experienced journalist, tasked with exploring that distance, end up admitting that he, too, was won over?

Before Fame, Learning to Watch

The image of Kim alongside Paris matters because it captures a hierarchy that once seemed clearly defined. Hilton embodied a kind of celebrity that already prompted the question later used against Kardashian: famous for doing what?

Kim worked organizing closets and reselling clothes, including for Paris. Although it became widespread, the description of “assistant” compresses several activities and an existing friendship into a convenient role for telling the story of her rise. She did not come from some distant world to discover Hollywood. She was already close to money, celebrities and the mechanisms that determined who deserved to be photographed.

That does not diminish what she built. It helps us understand her starting point without turning a privileged woman into someone who came from nothing.

In my reading, her great insight was understanding that curiosity did not have to end with a photograph. It could continue on television, move through a website, reach a phone and become an everyday relationship with an audience. Attention borrowed from someone more famous could become an audience of her own.

A Scandal Cannot Sustain Two Decades

The release of the intimate video with Ray J continues to be used as a sufficient explanation for everything that followed. It is a way of ending the conversation before it begins. It also keeps a woman’s sexuality in place as a permanent verdict on her worth.

The circumstances of its distribution remain disputed, and Van Meter acknowledges in the interview that he did not establish how the footage reached the company that released it. The biography therefore does not allow a contested account to be treated as a settled matter.

But another question exists, regardless of that origin: how many people exposed through scandals manage to sustain almost two decades of relevance?

The video helps explain the attention of a particular moment. To understand her staying power, we need to examine the work that followed. Keeping Up with the Kardashians, launched in 2007, turned a family into an ongoing narrative. Marriages, rivalries, motherhood, businesses and reconciliations fed a universe in which each member could generate new stories.

Kris Jenner played a decisive role in that construction. Recognizing Kim’s competence also requires acknowledging the family, business and professional structures that made her expansion possible. The empire was not built by one woman alone in front of a phone.

When Intimacy Becomes a Business

Kim understood how to offer familiarity on an industrial scale. Audiences follow her life and may feel they know her, even though they are watching an organized selection of events. Even the exposure of conflict can reinforce that closeness: the family argues, suffers, makes peace and returns in the next episode.

What is interesting is that recognizing this construction does not necessarily prevent emotional involvement. We can know there is editing and still be moved. We can identify a campaign and want the product.

The move into business expands that relationship. A celebrity can be paid to recommend a brand. Owning a company allows her to participate differently in the value her influence generates.

Skims is the clearest demonstration of that shift. In November 2025, a $225 million funding round valued the company at $5 billion. That is the valuation assigned to the business in that transaction, not Kim’s personal fortune. Even so, it represents a scale of business that makes describing her merely as someone who posts photographs inadequate.

Her image helps attract attention. Turning that attention into an enduring company requires products, distribution, teams, investment and commercial decisions. Her success as an influencer opened doors; the business’s survival depends on walking through them.

The Defenders Nobody Expected

One of the most interesting parts of Van Meter’s interview concerns the resistance he says he encountered when he announced he would write about Kim. To some people, devoting years of work to her already seemed like an error of judgment.

I understand the reaction, but there is some confusion here. Considering a phenomenon worthy of analysis does not require approving of everything it represents. Kim’s influence on beauty, consumption and personal exposure deserves examination precisely because its effects extend beyond whether we like her.

Conversely, proximity can produce an equally automatic defense. Van Meter describes watching her work, manage difficult situations and care for her children. Those experiences gave him access to dimensions absent from the public caricature.

The problem begins when recognizing someone’s humanity becomes a sufficient answer to every criticism. Being a loving mother does not resolve the contradictions of an industry built around appearance. Working hard does not erase privilege. Having been subjected to misogyny does not make every business decision beyond reproach.

It is possible to hold those ideas simultaneously. Kim may have been unfairly reduced to a scandal while also helping make millions of women’s relationships with their own images more exhausting.

When the Biographer Is Won Over

Van Meter admits that he developed a protective attitude toward Kim and took that difficulty into therapy. He himself connects his involvement to his mother’s death at the beginning of the project and to the maternal qualities he perceived in Kardashian.

It is a significant revelation because it comes from the author. We do not need to diagnose Kim or attribute a conscious strategy of seduction to her to recognize what happened: the relationship changed the perspective of the person who would write about her.

His candor does not eliminate the question of journalistic distance. It simply makes it visible.

In the same interview, when defending claims about cosmetic procedures, Van Meter offers his trust in Kim’s word as his basis. Elsewhere, he acknowledges that he did not interview Ray J or Kanye West, important figures at different stages of her life. Paris Hilton, according to his account, canceled their conversation 17 times.

Those absences do not make writing a biography impossible. But they matter when assessing the portrait he was able to construct. Privileged access and a complete picture are different things.

According to Van Meter, Kim read the manuscript for fact-checking, challenged passages and ultimately accepted material that made her uncomfortable. That suggests a more complex negotiation than the idea of a frictionless commissioned portrait. Even so, knowing what she approved does not remove the need to ask what the author was able to challenge.

The Woman Who Created the Future?

The subtitle is provocative because that future is already all around us. People are turning routines into content, intimacy into commercial relationships, and identity into a personal brand. Professionals in very different fields who need to appear, keep their channels active, and continually demonstrate their relevance.

Kim did not invent that world alone. Paris Hilton had already explored celebrity as a business, and many other figures contributed to the transformation. What Kardashian did was expand, combine and sustain those possibilities with extraordinary efficiency.

There is also a cost to that legacy. If everything can become content, rest can feel like a missed opportunity. If an image is an asset, aging, gaining weight or simply disappearing for a few days can take on the weight of professional failure.

That is why I am interested in discussing Kim without reducing the analysis to admiration or contempt. Her empire reveals both an ability to understand desires and a talent for helping manufacture them.

Twenty years ago, she helped organize Paris Hilton’s closet. Today, she helps organize some of what the world wants to wear, show and be. And perhaps the most telling sign of her influence lies in the people who reject her name while trying, every day, to turn their own lives into a brand.