In the beginning of the Kardashians’ meteoric rise to fame, youngest sister Khloe was often discussed in alternative terms to Kim and Kourtney.
According to tabloids, they were sex symbol social media princesses while Khloe was “the taller and bulkier” third cog in what was becoming a monstrous entrepreneurial machine.
At one point speculation as to why Khloe’s body was so ‘unlike’ her sisters’ was so intense, the Los Angeles Times wrote: “[her] lighter hair colour and larger build have sparked numerous rumours that she was either adopted or had a different father than her siblings.”
Aside from her tumultuous love life, perception of Khloe Kardashian has been almost entirely defined by her body, and her seesawing relationship with it.
This came, of course, before whirring paparazzi lights and TV-documented family dinners.
When her father Robert Kardashian died in September 2003, the personality, then 19 years old, says she descended into a "spiral" fixated around food.
"Internally just suppressing so many things that it was, like, eating me alive, and I was literally eating everything," she told E! News.
Since finding fame the narrative hasn't changed. Diet, weight, exercise and body image act as checkpoints for every major event in the 32-year-old's life.
“Everyone criticises me about my weight all the time," Khloe told Life & Style in July 2009, proudly adding: "It’s easy for me to be like some other girls in Hollywood — not eat and become anorexic — but thank goodness I am strong-willed and secure with myself.
"... Now I hate it when people compare me to my sisters. Kourtney’s five feet, I’m five-foot-10 and Kim is five-foot-two. I will never look like them. No matter how skinny I am, that body will never be mine.”
By April 2011, the reality TV star had a solemn perception of herself, and told Cosmopolitan her relationship with her body was a "lifetime struggle".
"My weight is always going up and down... I'm always fighting that. I feel like no matter what I do, I never look good enough to everybody else."
Months later, the mood had changed again. Khloe wrote on her blog: "I am finally in a really good place and learning to love me for me and not for someone else's standards."
By December 2013, news of her then-husband Lamar Odom's many affairs had broke, and so began stories of the star "rocking her best body ever" alongside timelines documenting her yoyo-ing weight.
"I've worked very hard on my body so I think now I can sex it up a little," she told Cosmopolitan.
By 2014, she chastised herself for "slacking off" while taping her reality TV show in the Hamptons, writing on Twitter: "I def gained 10 lbs or even more."
In 2015, she told Australian radio hosts Fitzy and Wippa her fixation with her weight "does become addictive", and shared with Instagram followers that she was drinking "five to six litres of water a day" to maximise results.
Last year, she said: "[In part, my weight loss is] for all my critics who called me 'the fat one' for my entire existence."
Within these years, the powerhouse penned a novel about her body titled Strong Looks Better Naked, and launched a reality TV program that aimed to help people deal with trauma by getting a Revenge Body, just like she did after her divorce from Odom.
The premise of Revenge Body was the prime example that the milestones in Khloe's life are marked by the size of her waist; her successes and supposed failures are perceived in correlation to how she looks.
By her own admission, Khloe Kardashian has an preoccupation with weight. And in that respect, she's like many women I know. Including myself.
Glittering cars and waxed mansions aside, this is the side of Khloe Kardashian that is innately human.
Because regardless of how much she's grown in confidence, comparing herself to her sisters is something Khloe still struggles with some eight years after giving those "I will never look like them" quotes to Life & Style.
"Hands down best body ever!" Khloe captioned a photo of Kim in a crop top and leather pants last week. "Shit, I have to get my shit together."
Of course, she doesn't have to get her "shit together" at all. Khloe Kardashian has never ventured beyond an Australian size 14 since we've known her. Her weight has never really been a question of health, but of image. Even at her largest, Khloe's body has represented millions of women, and has been erected as testament to the fact that beauty comes in all sizes.
No matter how skinny, toned, or curvy Khloe Kardashian gets, the transformational story of her body has become the prevailing narrative of her life; the one she gets asked about in almost every interview, the one that sees her peddle waist trainers, protein shakes and laxative teas to her 66.8 million followers.
Perhaps one day, hopefully, the youngest Kardashian sister will free herself of the "lifetime struggle" she and so many women feel imprisoned by.
More than anything though, Khloe Kardashian shows us that regardless of how many kilometres we run, or how loosely our clothes fit, the internal battle some women fight against themselves is the hardest one to win.
Top Comments
Maybe if Khloe wants to change things, it's up to her to change them? I completely understand what it's like to struggle with your weight, and I can't imagine how hard it must be to do it with such enormous public scrutiny. But by posting so much about her weight, advertising the detox/diet teas / waist trainers etc, she's just going along with it all. If she wants to change the narrative, how about stopping all that? Talk about other things - there's a million things she could be posting about. The trouble is that she and her family have based their fame in large part on their appearance, it's all about their clothing/ make up/ weight loss/ exercise routine/ etc etc.
Also, is that a typo in the article - "Glittering cars and waxed mansions"? Should it not be the other way around - unless waxed mansions are a thing, and I'm just old and out of the loop? :)
How I wish weight didn't define us but the sad fact is in this day and age of smoke and mirrors magazines it does. I've also struggled with weight all my life. Khloe has played on it though too, she's used it to her advantage.