How time flies. It’s the tenth anniversary of Keeping Up With the Kardashians and we’ve almost kaught up with them. Did you know some of the girls didn’t even want to do the show?
In an essay for Glamour, as told to writer Justine Harman, Khloé Kardashian reflected on the show’s birth, as midwifed by reality TV show doula Ryan Seacrest:
At my mom’s house, we’d always have these big family dinners. Ryan Seacrest came to one and was like, “You guys are crazy. You need to be on TV.” My mom and my sister Kim wanted to do the show, but Kourtney and I were really against it. We were like, “No—we love our little life. We love what we’re doing.” But Ryan said, “We need the whole family or nobody at all.” So my mom kind of sold it to us as a great commercial for our stores. We were like, “Ugh, fine.”
Yes, at the time Khloé and Kourtney were merely simple shop girls, running their boutiques Dash and Smooch in a regular ol’ mall. She claims that it was a desire to promote the stores that finally made her cave to her Momager, though it took awhile for fame to translate to sales.
Khloé seems astounded that she used to do her own make up and get affordable blow outs before filming; also that their pilot episode centered around a basic BBQ instead of a murder mystery/secret baby drama combo. The Kardashians have changed, and being in front of the camera wrought that change:
Occasionally I’ll catch an old episode and notice how we all talked in these baby voices. It’s crazy if you listen to it now. I think maybe we did it because we were nervous.
She also comments on how the sisters were each marketed, and how her weight made it difficult to get the kind of brand deals her elder sisters did. Now she has Revenge Body, a revenge on all those terrible maxi pad endorsements:
I was young, and I didn’t care as much. The truth is that I was heavier then too, so not a lot of endorsements were coming my way. Brands would prefer to align themselves with Kim or Kourtney, which I was totally fine with because I was still along for the ride. But it’s also a very sad thing to realize that most brands are interested only in pretty, cute, in-shape girls. There were things I did back then that made me think, Why am I doing this? I once did a deal with a tampon company, and I was like, “Why am I so thirsty?”
Khloé also briefly addresses the difficulties of her marriage to Lamar Odom, his subsequent overdose, and relying on alcohol through much of the 2014 season. There do seem to be some things that Khloé didn’t ever want on camera, like the Paris robbery or Caitlyn Jenner’s transition.
“That’s the kind of stuff we wish we had never filmed,” she says.
The Kardashians have gotten a lot more toned and glamorous in the last ten years—so much so that this family doesn’t seem like it would be able to keep up with who they’re going to become.