By: Samantha Puleo
Love the or hate them we all know who the Kardashians are. Their problems and scandals may not be of great importance to you, but one thing that I’m sure we can all agree on would be that trauma is nothing to joke about and it’s definitely not something to base a Halloween costume off of. This may sound confusing, so let me explain.
The Kardashian family has dealt with many controversies and scandals through the years. One of the most significant events that has happened to them would be when Kim Kardashian West was robbed at gunpoint in Paris on October 3, 2016. When she was attacked all she was wearing was a bathrobe and the perpetrators bound her wrist and ankles, taped her mouth, and placed her on the bathroom floor. A lot of people had a lot to say about what happened, many believed that Kim was targeted because of the constant social media posts that she had made, one particular post showing off her $4 million 20 karat diamond ring. And of course, with this family being so famous, this story blew up. Memes were made mocking the event and there were countless articles written with all kinds of different opinions about the subject. Which in these types of situations is normal, but something else happened that wasn’t so normal. A Halloween costume called “Parisian Heist Robbery Victim Costume” which showed a model being tied up, gagged, in a bathrobe, with a huge diamond ring, had come out on a website called Costumeish. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
There’s just so much ethically wrong with this whole situation. It’s definitely hard to defend the Kardashian family for some, mostly because of just how wealthy they are. But even more so because of what I mentioned previously about how during this time Kim was constantly promoting her lavish lifestyle on social media. But, if we look at this from the angle of deontological ethics, which say that “acts are morally obligatory regardless of their consequences for human welfare”, basically what’s wrong is wrong, we start to see how inappropriate this costume really is regardless of what your opinion is of Kim Kardashian. When you think about it, something so hurtful like this costume would never come out if this robbery had happened to an average person, but since it happened to someone so famous like Kim, people feel the need to capitalize on the issue in order to make a profit and publicity. In fact, Costumeish Vice President, Johnathan Weeks made a comment about why the costume was made, Weeks said:
“…the costume is meant to incite a strong reaction and that Halloween is a holiday that calls for some humor. It’ll make people either cringe or laugh”
Quote credit: TIME
Right away this statement tells me that this costume is for publicity purposes, to get the website’s name in the public’s mind and that there’s virtually no concern for the Kardashian families feelings or welfare. Which brings me to then look at large amounts of negative loyalties that this company has towards itself. In most cases, having a loyalty to ones self is a positive thing. But here we have the complete opposite, where a company has a loyalty to itself where it does not care about the harm they inflict onto people, they only care about outcomes that can benefit them. There is the saying that “all publicity is good publicity” which I truly think is a key strategy of this website. But when it all comes down to it, if there’s too much bad and you’re dealing with a powerful family like the Kardashians, it’s only a matter of time before you’ve got to bow down. Which is exactly what Johnathan Weeks did by issuing an apology to the family. I think what we can learn from all of this, is that everyone eventually in their lives goes through trauma and absolutely does not deserve to have that trauma used a device to benefit someone else. As a society we need to have loyalties to each other, to ensure and maintain respect always.