OPINION: Kim Kardashian is a better person than you.

A phrase I’d like to retire forever: “guilty pleasure.”

I’ve watched every single episode of all 11 seasons of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, many up to 20 times (see e.g., “Kris The Cheerleader” [Season 2, Ep. 4], “Free Khloe” [Season 3, Ep. 1], “Blame it on The Alcohol” [Season 4, Ep. 10]). I have zero guilt about this. And I’m guilty all the time. Guilty about how I treat my loved ones. Guilty about the number of chemical substances I need in my body at all times to feel normal. Guilty about draining the earth’s resources while providing nothing positive in return. And guilty about, in the words of Rihanna, a few other things I cannot mention.

But I’ve never been guilty about my fascination with the Kardashians. Because in a world where most things are hopeless and depressing, they make me laugh (remember when Kris briefly became a mime??) and touch my heart (the toast at Khloe’s engagement dinner kills moi). And in a culture where most things feel stale and uninspired, they never, ever, bore me. (Okay, fine, sometimes I’m bored when Kim is speaking.)

I was as excited with this result as I was with Kanye’s aesthetic revamp of the Kardashians.

Hollywood activism tends to feel performative and empty at best, counterproductive at worst. Celebrities throw garish galas and preach of equality, ignorant to the irony that they’re draped in blood diamonds. They wear black on the red carpet and think it will solve the gender pay gap. Professors Philip Hackney and Brian Mittendorf wrote of charity galas for The Conversation: “[t]hese inherently contradictory events intended to help people in need double as vehicles for the rich and famous to show off their largesse.” Experts find these lavish parties frequently fail to raise more money than they cost to throw or barely break even.

Kim’s effort felt valiant in comparison. She gave a woman her life back. Sure, you could say she did it for press. But she told Vogue it was actually the opposite.

“I made a decision to go to the White House when everyone was telling me, ‘Don’t go, your career will be over; you can’t step foot in there.’ And I was like, ‘It’s my reputation over someone’s life?’ Weigh that out. People talk shit about me all day long. It will just be another story about me versus someone getting their life back.”

During the process, Kim was working with Van Jones and Jessica Jackson, co-founders of #cut50 — a national bipartisan advocacy group on criminal justice reform. A criminal defence lawyer and friend of mine has interacted with #cut50 at conferences. “They all speak very highly of Kim,” she told me over text.

Kim Kardashian’s intersection with my former professional world is truly the last thing I expected. But I’m obsessed with it. I didn’t make it as a criminal justice attorney — mostly because I couldn’t make myself care about draconian formatting rules — but there are few professions I have more respect for.

I always knew Kim was a smarter and better person than me.

Kim is changing activism much in the way the Kardashians revolutionised fame and beauty standards. Unlike earlier socialites like Paris Hilton, a rail-thin blonde who was born into wealth and made fame appear effortless, Kim is an unapologetic hustler. In fact, she was initially Paris Hilton’s assistant. Journalist Anne Helen Petersen called Kim’s rise to fame “a postmodern industrial American dream.” While Paris Hilton’s name was built on a white man’s business empire, Kim — the offspring of Armenian immigrants — built her fortune on her curvy body and unyielding work ethic.

Likewise, in using her influence to get a woman out of prison, Kim is changing the nature of celebrity activism. Anyone with money can throw a party, but preparing for the California Bar Exam is hard — it was by far the most intellectually rigorous experience of my life.

As of today, Kim has met with President Trump at the White House multiple times to get pardons for inmates serving long prison sentences for drug offences, and she receives piles of letters every week from prisoners pleading their cases. In the Vogue interview, she talks about one case in particular that caught her interest; she’s meeting with California’s governor Gavin Newsom soon to make a direct appeal.

Anyone who’s worked in or even read about criminal justice knows just how many people are in prison who don’t deserve to be there. And thanks to Michelle Alexander’s watershed book, The New Jim Crow, most of us know how the criminal justice system serves as the new Jim Crow. If there is a more valiant use of your celebrity than getting a person of colour out of prison, I cannot think of one.

This post originally appeared on Medium.com and has been republished with full permission. For more by Anna Dorn, you can follow her on Medium or visit her website Anna-Dorn.com.