“Kim Kardashian Could Become President”: Biographer Reveals Her Family Secrets, Scandalous Past and Obsession with Fame

For years, Kim Kardashian was dismissed as a celebrity with no particular talent who rose to fame thanks to an intimate video and her marriage to Kanye West. But journalist Jonathan Van Meter, who spent five years studying the star’s life and gained unprecedented access to her inner circle, argues that Kardashian is vastly underestimated. In his view, she is not merely a media personality but one of the most influential women of our time, having transformed her fame into a multibillion-dollar business.

In his book Citizen Kim: The Woman Who Created the Future, Van Meter explores Kardashian’s childhood, family secrets, headline-making scandals and her determination to prove that she is far more than a reality TV star.

Kim now has around 344 million Instagram followers, while Skims, the shapewear brand she founded in 2019, is valued at £3.7 billion. According to the journalist, Kardashian can spark global fashion trends with a single social media post and build multimillion-dollar companies, The Telegraph reports.

Her influence, however, extends far beyond fashion. The hourglass silhouette she helped popularize, characterized by a sharply defined waist and fuller hips, contributed to the growing popularity of Brazilian butt lifts, shapewear and other ways of altering the body. Kardashian is also associated with the rise of the so-called “Instagram face” — a smooth, sculpted look that many people try to achieve through makeup, photo-editing apps and cosmetic surgery.

From Paris Hilton’s Assistant to a Multibillion-Dollar Empire

Van Meter admits that he initially wanted nothing to do with the Kardashian-Jenner family. He saw them as the embodiment of everything wrong with modern culture: selfie-era narcissism, the cult of physical perfection and the transformation of private life into an endless stream of content.

Kim, Kourtney, Khloé and Rob are the children of Kris Jenner and her first husband, attorney Robert Kardashian, who became famous for defending O. J. Simpson. Kendall and Kylie were born during Kris’s second marriage, to former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner, who later became known as Caitlyn Jenner.

In 2016, Van Meter nevertheless agreed to write a profile of Kendall for Vogue, giving him an opportunity to get to know the family. He describes the Kardashian-Jenners as an extraordinarily close-knit matriarchy whose members possess an almost mystical ability to achieve whatever they set their minds to.

He later discovered that behind the image of carefree reality TV personalities lay serious business interests. Kim herself complained that the show made it appear as though the family did little more than joke around and drink cocktails, when in reality she was working on criminal justice reform and meeting with governors.

In 2019, Kardashian appeared on the cover of American Vogue. That same year, she revealed an unexpected ambition: to become a lawyer. In 2021, on her fourth attempt, she passed California’s “baby bar” exam, taken by first-year law students.

Kim has also campaigned for the release of prisoners. In 2018, she persuaded Donald Trump to grant clemency to Alice Marie Johnson, who was serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug-related offense. Kardashian subsequently helped secure the release of dozens more people.

“She was literally almost a billionaire studying to become a lawyer. It’s incredible,” Van Meter says, explaining why he decided to write her biography.

A Mother Who Created the Perfect Childhood

Kris Jenner occupies a central place in the book. The author calls her an “architect of happiness” who orchestrated her children’s childhoods as though she were directing a big-budget movie.

Robert Kardashian, an Armenian-American attorney whom Kris met in 1973, when she was 17 and he was 29, played an important role. According to Van Meter, Robert’s financial resources allowed the family to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle.

Robert owned a video camera and filmed Kim and Kourtney having breakfast before school every morning. Perhaps this explains why Kim wanted to become famous as early as the age of seven: she repeatedly begged her mother to take her to a modeling agency and eventually appeared in a six-page feature in Barbie magazine.

Behind the picture of a happy family, however, there were problems. In 1989, Kris began an affair with a young soccer player and even invited him into the family home while her children were there. Robert hired a private investigator to expose his wife’s infidelity. The couple divorced in 1991, when Kim was 10.

Despite this, Kardashian continues to describe her childhood as perfect. Van Meter suggests that her memories may have been shaped by the home videos her mother made: Kim may have retained the moments Kris wanted preserved in the family’s story.

After the divorce, Kris married Bruce Jenner, whose athletic career was by then in decline. She became his manager, reinvented him as a motivational speaker and appeared alongside him in fitness commercials. Some of the advertisements also featured young Kim and Kourtney.

The Kardashian Family and the O. J. Simpson Case

The family’s name began attracting widespread attention in 1994, following the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, O. J. Simpson’s ex-wife and a close friend of Kris Jenner. Robert Kardashian defended Simpson in court, placing himself at the center of one of the most notorious trials in American history.

Van Meter recounts some extraordinary details from that period. According to the journalist, Simpson threatened to kill himself in the bedroom of Khloé, Robert’s daughter. The attorney suggested several alternative places where he could do it, then took out a camera to arrange a last-minute photo shoot.

The infamous police chase involving Simpson’s white Ford Bronco was equally dramatic. Before police arrived, Robert left a friend in the garden with a weapon and went away himself. By the time officers arrived, Simpson had already disappeared.

“Kim Kardashian’s father is responsible for perhaps the most iconic moment in television history,” Van Meter says, referring to the chase.

As a teenager, Kim secretly sneaked into her father’s office and studied the case files, trying to make sense of the murder. Van Meter speculates that she wanted to figure out which of her parents to believe and put an end to the tension between them.

Kim grew up viewing Simpson almost as an uncle: her parents conceived her during a skiing trip with Simpson and Nicole. Khloé later told the journalist that, as a teenager, Kim would even comfort prisoners over the phone when they somehow managed to obtain her number.

The scandal brought the family its first major reputational setbacks. They faced bomb threats, were refused service at restaurants, and Robert’s reputation suffered damage that persisted until his death in 2003. Yet the case also made the Kardashian name recognizable across the country.

The Sex Tape That Changed Kim’s Life

In 2007, an intimate video featuring Kim Kardashian and her then-boyfriend, singer Ray J, surfaced online. The recording subsequently came into the hands of Vivid Entertainment, a company specializing in adult films. That same year, the E! network approved the launch of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

Kim has described the release of the video as one of her biggest regrets. Van Meter believes the episode may have fueled her long-standing determination to earn recognition in more serious professional circles, from high fashion to law and Hollywood.

“Sometimes I think all of this is happening because I’m that girl from the sex tape who is trying to prove to everyone that she’s more than that,” the journalist recalls Kardashian telling him. According to Van Meter, she spoke about it with complete sincerity and returned to the subject several times.

The question of who actually handed the recording to the distributor remains unresolved. Van Meter does not believe Kris Jenner was involved, but he suggests that Kim herself may have played some role in how the video became public.

“It’s pretty clear that Kim signed some kind of nondisclosure agreements and can’t speak openly about how the tape ended up in the hands of Vivid Entertainment,” the author explains. He also believes Kardashian may not have fully understood how devastating the experience of public humiliation would be.

Writing the book was not without disagreements. When Kim first read the manuscript, she sent the journalist two pages of comments, most of them concerning the chapter about the intimate video. Van Meter refused to remove it, and Kardashian ultimately agreed to let the passage remain.

The Marilyn Monroe Dress Controversy

The biographer did not address some of the most controversial episodes of Kim’s career. In particular, he left out the story of the Marilyn Monroe dress Kardashian wore to the 2022 Met Gala.

The gown was worn by Monroe in 1962 when she sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to John F. Kennedy. Kardashian’s appearance in the dress on the red carpet sparked a storm of criticism, with the star accused of treating the historic garment irresponsibly and even damaging it.

“The Marilyn story caught me off guard. It turned out to be one of those episodes that ultimately didn’t make it into the book,” Van Meter admits. He feared the backlash could be devastating for Kardashian, but says she responded that she had anticipated the controversy and was not worried about it.

The journalist also left out the story of Kardashian telling her followers that she had lost more than six kilograms in three weeks ahead of the Met Gala by following an extreme diet. Nor did he mention the appetite-suppressant lollipops she promoted in 2018.

Van Meter is convinced that Kim has never undergone invasive plastic surgery and maintains that her curves are natural. He acknowledges, however, that trying to convince the public of this is a losing battle.

Why Kim Cannot Give Up Fame

The biographer suggests that Kardashian’s habit of constantly displaying her body — from revealing selfies to the giant bikini-clad image of Kim in Times Square as part of a Skims campaign — may serve as a kind of defense mechanism.

Kim has said she experienced unwanted attention from men from an early age. Now, however, she controls how she appears in public and turns that attention into a source of income.

Van Meter speculates that Kanye West played a role in shaping her relationship with her appearance, helping her see her body as something akin to a work of art.

Nevertheless, the journalist does not view Kardashian as a celebrity tormented by fame. In his observation, she rarely drinks, spends most of her time working or with her children, and maintains her composure even after traumatic experiences.

In 2016, while staying at a Paris hotel, Kim was tied up and robbed by armed criminals. They stole jewelry worth approximately $10 million, and the star feared she would be raped and killed. Following the attack, she stopped posting her location in real time and later sought therapy.

But she never walked away from public life.

“I’ve never met anyone who loves fame more than Kim. She fucking loves it,” Van Meter says.

Kim and Lewis Hamilton: A New Chapter

The journalist devotes considerable attention to Kardashian’s relationship with Kanye West, with whom she shares four children. Van Meter chose not to interview the musician, deciding that doing so would be unethical following his antisemitic remarks in 2022, given concerns about his mental health. Kim herself spoke about her ex-husband mostly off the record.

The book also explores the couple’s divorce in 2022. However, Kardashian’s new relationship with Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton does not feature in the biography: their romance became public only after the manuscript was completed.

Van Meter recalls a phone call in which Kim told him, “Oh my God, Jonathan, he treats me so well.” The journalist considers Hamilton a good match for the star: he has a sufficiently high-profile public persona to stand comfortably alongside her.

“Citizen Kim” — or President Kim?

Van Meter admits that he chose Kardashian as the subject of his biography after previously trying to arrange books about Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey. Kim struck him as a mystery he wanted to solve.

He believes the public sees her too superficially and fails to recognize the scale of her influence. And her ambitions, it seems, know no bounds.

The journalist jokes that in 20 years he might write a sequel titled President Kim, rather than Citizen Kim.

“She has a very strong desire to do things that make people ask, ‘What is going on?’ Kim wants to be radical,” Van Meter concludes.

He also sees unexpected parallels between the Kardashian-Jenner family and the British royal family: enormous homes, relatives constantly visiting one another, a closed social circle and even annual Christmas photographs.

Van Meter once recommended that Kim watch The Crown. She called him shortly afterward to say she was watching it — and had questions. But she apparently never watched Citizen Kane, the film whose title inspired the journalist’s book.

Jonathan Van Meter’s Citizen Kim: The Woman Who Created the Future goes on sale on October 29.