Kim Kardashian Cast Real Women for Her New KKW Body Fragrance Campaign

November 1, 2018

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When it comes to promoting her KKW Beauty and Fragrance lines, we've become accustomed to seeing Kim Kardashian West herself in the ads and social media posts. The bottle for KKW Body was literally molded from its creator's famously curvy figure.

But the reality star and beauty mogul is taking a different approach with her two latest creations: KKW II and KKW III. To promote the scents, the company has been posting close-up images of real women's bodies, many of which feature rolls, wrinkles, and cellulite. It's a stark contrast to the hyper-perfected shots of Kardashian that we're used to. And that's not a bad thing.

When Kardashian West's original fragrance bottle came out, people were upset with the unrealistic beauty ideals it portrayed. One body-positive blogger even re-created the campaign to make a point about the "perfect" bodies. "One of these bodies, a large part of our society will deem as 'perfect,'" read the post's caption. "My body is empowered by the opportunity to share a different reality. PERFECT: 'having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.' Stop striving to be perfect because guess what, you are there!"

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It seems like Kardashian West got the message loud and clear. She recently spoke to Refinery29 about the casting choices, and how the re-creations floating around on the Internet played an important role in the decision.

"I was talking to some friends of mine, and I had seen a couple other people re-create the [original KKW Body] campaign and I just thought, You know what? It's not always about my body," she explained. "The bottle obviously is my body shape, but I always celebrate and love confident women no matter what shape or size they are."

She also revealed that many of the women were not professional models, but that they were all confident and excited to participate in the campaign. Her intended message is pretty straight-forward. "Just to be confident within your own skin—I think I've always put forth that message," she said. "In the magazines I would look at, everyone was super tall and skinny, and I didn't feel like I had something that represented my curvier body shape growing up. And so I just wanted to show a campaign that supports women of all different shapes to feel confident within themselves."

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Kardashian West's own experiences with body shaming definitely played a part in her decisions, as well. "When you do get shot by a paparazzi and you do have cellulite, which you know has definitely happened to me before, it'll be on the cover of magazines like, 'Worst Body Of The Week' and, 'Look how awful she looks,'" she said. "It's always so hard on your soul when you see things like that, and I see that happen to so many other women and I never thought that was fair. And so to show it in an artistic way just felt beautiful and right, and I really wanted to show people that you can be beautiful no matter if you have stretch marks or cellulite."

Reaction to the campaign has been strong—and mostly positive. One commenter on an Instagram image praised Kardashian's choices: "I’m loving this campaign. Thank you for spreading the body positivity Kim." And another said, "I'm very happy that these bodies look like everyday people. Yes queen🔥🔥🔥"

We're sure we haven't seen the last of Kardashian modeling for her own products, but this change is definitely welcome and refreshing. The two new fragrances will be available online November 2 for $60.