It has come to my attention that people are criticizing Kim Kardashian West for tweeting a selfie that cut out her daughter North.
Kardashian immediately responded to her critics, tweeting, “Her eyes were closed and I was feeling my look! Can I live?!?!”
Apparently in the age of social media, mothers should feel obligated to include their children in their selfies, even if those children would grow up and ask them, “Mom, why did you share this photo of me with my eyes closed to your 26 million followers?”
Kardashian looks beautiful in that photo—she said she’s feeling her look, and she should be. Apparently she joined a handful of other women and their children for Disney on Ice, and if you look back through Kardashian’s Twitter feed, there are three other photos of her daughter, the other cute kids, and beautiful moms who joined.
The thing is, Kardashian shouldn’t need defend this photo in the first place. That’s the beauty of selfies—we take them when we look good, and when we feel good. And who hasn’t cropped someone out of a photo because they looked stunning and the other person might have ruined it?
In almost every photo I’ve taken with a boyfriend, he’s cropped out of the picture—not necessarily because he looked drunk or silly while I looked smashing, but because he didn’t want to be posted on the Internet for my Facebook friends to see. And I’ve been cropped out of plenty of photos, too, knowing that my friends are ultimately doing me a favor.
Kardashian isn’t just a mother—she’s also a woman, a fashion designer, and an entrepreneur who feels confident in her beauty and her sexuality. And if she feels the picture of her daughter is one that North might one day not feel as confident about, or she would rather not share, than so be it.
Crop whomever you want out of your photographs. If you look good, show it off. And your children or significant others cropped out of them will probably thank you one day.
Photo by Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
