Bella Naija
“I have the best advice for women in business. Get your f^^king ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.”
Clad in all black, the Kardashian sisters and Kris Jenner are stunning on the cover of the latest issue of Variety where they talk about their careers, their new show on Hulu, and give advice to young women in the working world.
Kim’s advice to women is simple: work. Perhaps she senses how that advice would be interpreted, so down the interview, she says she’s just being “factual”: “With all respect, and with love, I’m not, like, being a bitch.”
A meme is flying around on Twitter, a smiling white lady is spotted wearing a top with the writing “stop being poor”, her arms spread upwards. People use this to describe Kim’s business advice, and I cannot help but laugh, because this is true.
We live in a world where the richest and most privileged of all have the most to say about how lazy the “unsuccessful” and “poor” are. There’s this “oh, I worked my ass off” coming from people who inherited their family’s businesses. Then the “I came from nothing” from those who rode in chauffeur-driven cars in their childhood. In a world where people are quick to dismiss other people’s successes because of their privileges, I understand the need to quickly tell the world you are a hard worker and you did not have it all too – you worked, and then you built.
It is true that Kim Kardashian works hard, but do you know who else does? Billions of women around the world. They wake up each day and grind hard. They take care of their homes while handling their businesses and careers.
There’s something unsettling about telling people to get their ass up and work. Advice like this are outrightly dishonest – because you leave out the part where your privileges aid your hard work. They are also delusional, an insult to the billions of hardworking people in the world, and dismissive of women’s struggles.
A long time ago, I made up my mind to stop attending certain conferences and events organised for women, especially on International Women’s Day or in the International Women’s Month. I was tired of the too-many talks that do not metamorphose into actions – panel sessions and keynote speeches that get you all fired up for the 2-3 hours you’ll be in the hall and then you go out to enter Danfo and face your reality. But majorly because these events were just – events, something done to tick off the…
