Kim Kardashian is Batman

And other bullshit we need to come to terms with

I’m certainly not the first person to wonder how much more good Bruce Wayne could have done if he’d used his billions in the wider world, rather than on elaborate mugging prevention in Gotham City.

Even if we assume he didn’t divert all his actual cash-money directly into mosquito nets or low-income housing development; Even if we assume he didn’t don his bat-suit, jump in his bat-plane, and hop around the globe eliminating genocidal dictators; Even if we assume he kept his man-cave and dress-up fetish, and carried on a side-hustle as the city’s local crime-fighting vigilante, he could still change the world by simply sharing some intellectual property around:

The incredibly lightweight and flexible bullet-proof material his suit is made could prevent countless workplace injuries… The miniature propulsion system used to fire grappling hooks with enough force to embed them in literal concrete could enable all manner of industrial efficiencies… The material science used to build essentially indestructible blades, and ultra-strong cables, and flowing capes that allow safe evacuation from the top of tall buildings… The aerodynamics research which enables the design of weapons that can be hand-thrown and still offer unbelievable precision… The computer software… The vehicle suspension systems… and so on…

But, no, we’re quite accustomed to billionaires putting their exploitation-derived riches into niche dick-swinging contests, proprietary life enhancement, and reliving the dreams of their closest childhood companions—the science fiction novels they sullenly read, over the audio backdrop of other kids actually interacting and playing down in the street outside their bedroom window.

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A few days ago, Kim Kardashian broke the internet—as usual—with a bra from her “shapeware” company SKIMS which incorporated ‘nipples’ into the design. Now, I’m not an expert on women’s underwear or the quality of the SKIMS products in general, nor am I making any particular judgement about the inclusion of nipples on a bra. It seems to me that, if there’s a market for it—and there presumably is, for a range of people who identify as women and who want to present with “harder” or “chilly” nipples for pure femininity or (excuse the pun) titillation purposes—then it’s fair enough.

For ‘90s Batman fans, this piece has layers (Warners / SKIMS)

So, my issue wasn’t with the bra itself.

I do generally have a bit of an issue with Kimmy K, whose fame and wealth was already inexplicable to anyone with a mental age above approximately ‘13-year-old-boy’. But I acknowledge, in this, she’s also just a willing participant in a grim and intentionally misleading game:

The ESG con.

You’ll have heard of ESG—Environmental, Social, and (corporate) Governance. It gets bandied about in all sorts of corporate marketing contexts, but the important thing to understand her is it is a term developed for investors.

I think we all have a pretty good idea of what investors do but, for the sake of clarity, The Economist magazine lays it out succinctly:

“...it is an investor’s job to consider exactly what it would mean for their portfolio”

That second “it” in there could refer to a new fossil fuel pipeline being built, or a change in government, or some disruptive tech innovation, or an interest rate shift, or a drop in a foreign-exchange rate.

Although, in that particular case, the “it” was referring to the potential millions of casualties from World War III…

Anyway.

The point is, an investor cares about how changes in the world, which will ricochet around in the markets they have money in, will impact on their total mix of assets and investments.

As an example, a smart investor might hedge a future risk to their banana plantation investments¹ by investing a bit in spinach² farming.

This is all to say, it is not the job of an investor to care whether the world would be happier full of delicious sweet bananas or slimy overcooked spinach. It is their job to read and absorb the research (or the tea-leaves) and determine that a population will always need a large amount of potassium in their diet, so they should ensure their portfolio has a dependable potassium component.

And this is where ESG comes in.

Around the time Joel Schumacher was dreaming up bat-nipples, the processed food industry was on a low-fat tear. Some since-debunked research had got the public in a spin about the threat that “fat” posed for obesity and heart disease, and the processed food found themselves with a truly wonderful money-making opportunity.

Now, I’m not certain we’ve resolved the fat question even now—I’m personally in the “everything in moderation” camp on nutrition so I largely stay out of those debates—but it’s very clear that not all fats are equal. However, back then, the processed food industry, backed by the enormous weight of the sugar industry, were more than happy to play to customer fears by replacing relatively-expensive saturated fat flavours with the low-cost flavours of high-fructose syrups and trans fats. And then load up their marketing with “low fat” and “healthy choice” bullshit.

This, of course, continues to do astonishing damage to the health of Western populations. But the dominance of this conversation in the zeitgeist also converted a shit-load of busy and distracted people into docile processed-food-consumers who, to this day, value convenience and low cost far too highly to flip the package over and consider the number of multi-syllabic chemicals they are about to ingest.

(Bing image creator)

We are presently facing a similar kind of social reckoning. We’ve actually now largely reached a consensus that climate change is a) bad, and b) human caused. I mean, it’s a shame it’s taken a bunch of fatal “firenados” and “atmospheric rivers” to ensure our water-cooler conversations at least start from those basic foundations, but at least anyone still denying human-derived global warming is now generally in the ‘out group’.

What that means is the powers-that-be have a new public scare to build their business on: Existential Climate Destruction.

Technically, ESG includes things like diverse hiring, corporate board practices, and not swimming too much against the mainstream tide by cheering on police brutality or child labour. But, in practice, the most “marketable” ESG stuff is in the Environment bit—switching over to electric company cars and paperless communication; banning single-use cutlery in the staff kitchen; planting a few trees or giving some shady consultancy firm a few million to purchase the “protection” of some existing trees etc.

“I’m from the marketing department, and I’m here to help”

You probably have heard the term “greenwashing” to describe all sorts of corporate behaviours, covering up true capitalist intent with some minor feel-good thing to bury reality under in annual reports and websites.

You might think greenwashing is poor form and should be called out. I agree. But we also need to understand that greenwashing is a perfectly valid marketing approach.

Marketing is principally about two things: Making things desirable; and assuring us the company selling the ‘desirable thing’ cares about the same sorts of things we care about. When we’re a bit scared, what we want to hear is the company cares enough to be doing something to address that fear. Hence, the theatrics of greenwashing.

Which brings me back to Kim. You can’t really fault her marketing nous; she knows she has an enormous global fan base who hang off her every word; she knows she can fulminate fashion trends with a single post on Instatok or Snapbook. She can confidently take business risks that would make other companies a laughingstock. I don’t know that “chilly nipple” is a mainstream summer trend we need, but I have little doubt it’s what we’re going to get.

My problem is both her and the fawning media, are presenting this all as a genuine good rather than clever marketing, and the leveraging of her unique marketing presence. When batman mangles a $100,000³ batsuit, breaks windows, and destroys a bunch of stock by pushing over a series of shelves in his attempt to catch a shoplifter, we shouldn’t cheer him on! Likewise, when SKIMS creates a new bra out of fossil fuels (nylon/polyester), then puts a couple of extra bumps on the front so they can stage an elaborate launch extoling your ability to maintain your cold-weather nipples even as the planet warms and Antartica melts, we shouldn’t cheer that on either.

Just to make this explicit, this is copy on their IG post (bold citations are mine):

“In addition to our investment in advancing carbon removal (ay? What investment? Carbon-intensive manufacturing of things like novelty bras is literally causing icebergs to melt!), SKIMS is proud to donate 10% of sales from our SKIMS Ultimate Nipple Bra (10% of the sale of a single bra? One week of bras? A year?), as a one-time donation (hmm, long-term commitment!), to @1percentftp (who?) - a global network with thousands of businesses and environmental organizations working together to support people and the planet.

Look, I’m onboard with organisations committing to contributing funding towards environmental aspirations. Even if SKIMS had fully signed on to donate 1% of their gross revenue to the planet (it seems unlikely they have), my conspiracy-addled mind suspects any company doing this is just going to add an extra 1% markup on their products as a “feel-good certification surcharge”.

I don’t know too much about 1percentftp, but I can tell you about some other 1%’s: 1% of the world’s total population control significantly over 50% of the world’s total wealth; a trip in a private car produces roughly 1% the emissions as travelling the same distance in a private jet; SKIMS dedicates approximately 1% of the text on their FAQ page to generic ‘ESG’ bullshit like “we are committed to the highest ethical standards and legal compliance in all aspects of our business and product supply chain”…

skims

A post shared by @skims

To emphasise this point, in their rush to laud Kardashian’s genius the media have even hunted down a small group of women who suffered through breast cancer and subsequently lost their natural nipple profile, so are now apparently “excited” by the prospect of simulated visible nipple bumps through their clothing again. I don’t know… I can’t claim to be an expert here, but I feel like the vast majority of women actually would generally preference a less prominent nipple area to catch the hubba-hubba-eyes of grubby teenage boys and middle-aged men (?) So, this altruistic justification for media to post half-naked photos of KK on the front page of their websites feels like it’s tapping into a far more niche benefit than the racy new fashion trend I suspect Kim actually intended it to be? Don’t hesitate to tell me I’m completely wrong about that in the comments!

Regardless, all of this simply highlights the danger we face from our ignorance around this stuff. In the past 100 years, we’ve been consistently conned by automakers, the tobacco and alcohol industries, financiers, tech-bros, airlines, media companies… Nearly every industry, once concentrated into the hands of a select few, becomes a conduit for misleading information about what wider social good their product supposedly provides: Doctors recommending cigarettes and automakers lobbying against public transport have killed a bunch of people and set our social cohesiveness back a great deal. But, innocently accepting information and condoning less-than-serious big climate emitter behaviours, like this, has a very real danger of being way worse. Allowing glitzy companies to present themselves as socially and environmentally aware and responsible just eats further into the shrinking time we have to deal with the worse effects of climate change.

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ESG is for investors

An investor’s job is explicitly to divine future possibilities and risks, protect their portfolio accordingly, then roll over, fart, and go to sleep; they’re always going to fuck us for money. But even they can see the writing on the wall. So, what ESG really is, is a set of investing checkboxes which acknowledge there may be “profit headwinds” for companies who continue to hire CEOs that shamelessly use the n-word, or drive endangered animals out of their natural habitats with fire etc. A global refugee crisis, drought, eco-terrorism, or entire regions becoming ‘uninsurable’ are all going to impact someone’s bottom line, and ESG investing is simply the rational view that companies who front-load solutions to these problems are likely to be good long-term profit makers.

And businesses—as reliant on fickle customers as on investors—are just going to tag along. Meaning, they need to do just enough ESG to protect both their image and their viability.

In other words, ESG and the general “good corporation” stuff is not for us.

Don’t get me wrong. A company that plants trees is better than one that doesn’t. But, equally, a company that plants trees to distract from the growing environmental impact another part of their business is perpetuating is a massive problem. What we think ESG does is hold companies to account for the social impacts of their commercial activity—the oft-promised ideal that only the market can solve problems. What actually happened is a useful tool to reassure investors about future corporate strategy escaped the boardroom and landed in the in-tray of a marketing intern.

And now, we’re bombarded by a bunch of corporates spending more money on advertising their ESG credentials than actually putting any meaningfully ambitious ESG activities into place.

To put this another way, there is a thing called ‘fiduciary responsibly’, which makes it the Number One Priority for a (public) company to make as much money for their investors as possible. Fiduciary responsibility is important—it (in principle) prevents shady activities like cartel formation—but it also guarantees a business will only ever do as much environmental, social, and corporate governance stuff as is profitable.

So, when we hear billionaires business owners and influencers talking about climate change, and the media lionising them for their virtuousness, we need to keep that in mind.

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I’ve picked on Kim Kardashian here, but really this is a warning to be suspicious of any claims or allusions like this. She doesn’t have batman’s gadgets or skillset, but she does have his money and, arguably, a lot more global influence. Here is a billionaire, celebrating herself for mentioning climate change, and being equally celebrated in the media for making visible nipples available for “breast cancer survivors”. Meanwhile, she flies in her private jet and parties on her superyacht, poses in her impossible body to stoke the insecurity of millions of young girls, uses and abuses the capitalist toolkit of low-wage labour, low-cost shipping, and unpriced externalities and, like so many other billionaires and powerful corporates, generally ensures—when it comes to their real impact—we’re blind as bats.

-T

1. Seriously, there’s a genuine possibility that bananas as we know them could become extinct, because our most popular banana varieties are so in-bred. It’s a constant battle to stay ahead of diseases, like Panama Disease .

2. Per serving, spinach has more potassium than bananas.

3. That is a wild guess, but I’m assuming something that unique and complex is not cheap to repair.