Somebody’s getting married! It feels as if we’ve been waiting forever, but the wedding of the year takes place this weekend. And there will be no Dad dancing, no substandard canapes, and no aunties who have been ‘doing the Rosemary Conley’ for a month to be able to zip up their brand new Coast dresses, the lack of food making them light headed and lecherous before they have finished their second glass of champagne. This is Kim and Kanye. This will make one of Louis XVI’s parties look ‘a bit caj’.
We can tell that the world is excited, because ‘Kim Kanye wedding’ garners over 265 million Google hits. Kim’s Google rankings have shot up since we watched the first ever episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians in 2007, but since she became a person of interest, something interesting has happened. When she generates the most headlines and the greatest amount of publicity, it’s because she is being publicly associated with a man. Her main news spikes are connected with her engagement to Kanye, her Vogue cover with Kanye, getting pregnant with Kanye’s baby and the Kanye cheating allegations. Pre Kanye, the biggest headline generators were her marriage to, and divorce from Kris Humphries.
According to Forbes, who place her at No.66 in their Top Hundred Most Powerful Celebrities list, Kim made $10 million dollars last year. She’s indisputably successful - she’s doing incredibly well in her chosen field. But she seems to be more successful when she’s in a relationship. Kim-with-a-guy looks like a more bankable proposition than single Kim. Does this mean that in 2014, a woman still needs to be associated with a man in order to boost her own professional profile?
Kim could be an atypical example, because her ‘brand’ is personality based. Her biggest skill is showcasing her life for her fans, and every product and endorsement associated with her is hooked off that. But we could look at Jennifer Aniston, a very talented comic actor who spent 10 years starring in one of the most watched sitcoms of all time. Public interest in Jennifer has waned since her divorce from Brad Pitt. She’s still newsworthy, but the stories keep referring to her marriage, which ended 10 years ago. Brad’s new partner Angelina Jolie seems much more successful. Her stock has steadily risen since she became associated with Brad, eclipsing ‘poor Jen’. (Incidentally, when you search for Jennifer Aniston’s name, one of the first results is ‘Angelina Jolie says she may never wed Brad Pitt!’)
Beyonce and Victoria Beckham are examples of other women whose careers have become bigger and more lucrative when they have publicly involved their husbands in their life and work. It’s easy to say ‘But we thought you were an Independent Woman, Beyonce!’ but we’re the ones who are driving the celebrity machine. It’s our collective fascination with these women and their marriages and relationships that generates this success. If we wanted more headlines about Bey’s vocal range, Victoria’s skills as a designer or Jennifer’s comic timing, we’d be getting them.
Not that long ago, young, married women didn’t get hired at all, the assumption being that they would soon bugger off to make a baby. In this context, our obsession with the relationships of professional women feels like some kind of progress. At least we’re no longer asking whether Kim can keep working, and why doesn’t she just chill and let Kanye pay for all of North’s Swarovski studded nappies.
In that respect, celebrity relationships are more progressive than real life ones. A study undertaken by the French Institute Of National Statistics, Insee, found that heterosexual women with partners earned an average of 42 per cent less than their husbands or boyfriends. We recently cheered on discovering that women in their twenties actually out earn men, but it appears that’s only possible in the first part of our careers. Our gender still loses us around £300,000 in wages over the course of our lifetime, which suggests that as soon as we grown up and settle down, our earning potential plummets. Ideally life events like marriage and babies wouldn’t have any impact at all upon our salaries, but if they have to effect change, it’s obviously better if that change is positive.
Beyonce, Victoria and Kim have identified a way of making the personal profitable. If they can achieve more by being associated with a man, they’re still doing something on their own terms. They’re not financially taken care of by their husbands, but they’re doing what they can to take care of business. They didn’t create the system, but that’s no reason not to take advantage of it. Jennifer Aniston is an example of a woman who is defined by an old relationship no matter how private she tries to be about her own life. If she could turn that level of intrusion into a way of making money, I wouldn’t blame her.
Ultimately it makes me a little sad that tomorrow is a working day for Kim, but that won’t stop me searching, scrolling, clicking and gawping at the pictures. If famous women become more successful when they’re married, I’m part of the problem. And they definitely deserve to make dollar from that.
Follow Daisy on Twitter @NotRollerGirl
Picture: Rex
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.