Kim Kardashian Blasted for Defending Her Reaction to Balenciaga—'Hypocrite'

Kim Kardashian spoke out against feeling vilified for her reaction to Balenciaga's recent controversy when it was accused of sexualizing children.

The 42-year-old had served as an ambassador for the Spanish fashion house and even starred in a recent campaign.

But when it came under fire over images featuring children posing with teddy bear bags in bondage gear, Kardashian was criticized for not speaking out fast enough or for condemning the brand further.

"The Balenciaga thing. It was like 'why aren't you speaking out?' And I'm like wait, I'm not in this campaign. I don't know what's happening, let me take a minute...as soon as I saw what everyone was seeing on the Internet and the reality of the situation, I completely spoke out and gave my thoughts on child p–n and completely denounced it," Kim Kardashian told Angie Martinez on her IRL podcast.

"But because I didn't say, 'f*** you, Balenciaga, that's it,' people got mad at that. So it's like, they're mad if I don't speak out. They're mad if I do speak out, and if I don't cancel. They're just mad that if you don't cancel someone in today's society, then...I know people talk about cancel culture, but it's still happening."

Kardashian added: "It's never been my place. The point of life is to make mistakes and to grow and to involve and be better people. Obviously there is absolutely no place for an ounce to even play with anything with children. Any sexualization of children, there's not an ounce of that should be in our brains, in our society. I get that. I couldn't have been more clear, this is horrifying, this is disturbing."

The images of children posing with the BDSM teddy bears appeared in the Balenciaga Objects campaign and the other controversial images appeared in a campaign for its Adidas collaboration.

One of the campaign images showed a bag resting on a pile of papers, one of which included an excerpt from a 2008 Supreme Court ruling.

A petition to the court asked it to rule whether laws banning "pandering"—i.e. promoting— child pornography was a violation of freedom of speech under the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court ruled it wasn't, and voted in a majority to uphold laws criminalizing the advertising, distribution, and promotion of child pornography.

People were very divided over Kardashian's comments on the podcast with some arguing that they were not good enough.

"I'm sorry she's just such a strategist. Everything she does just screams PR. You can't sit on a fence with Balenciaga & morality & you can't manipulate people to think otherwise. The statement basically said there's a possibility you'd still work with them once the dust settles??" one person wrote on Twitter.

Another argued: "This is why you need your own core moral and values. When you make decisions to please people you end up annoying most of them. We will always be suspicious of her actions and she will always be frustrated by our scepticism. She just doesn't get it."

Others took Kardashian's side, suggesting people would have found a reason to criticize her no matter what.

Musician Solomon Ray wrote: "She's 100% right."

A second person commented: "I'm going to separate Kim from Kanye a bit. I really see her try to do good and people would be like she's trying to clout chase and then when she is silent they call her a fraud. People in the comments are calling Kim privileged, etc; Some hate cause of how she got famous."

Kardashian had taken a few days to address the controversy when it first happened and eventually addressed it on her social media, saying "as a mother of four" she was "disgusted" by the images.

"As for my future with Balenciaga, I am currently re-evaluating my relationship with the brand, basing it off its willingness to accept accountability for something that should have never happened to begin with—& the actions I am expecting to see it take to protect children," Kardashian added in the statement.

After the IRL podcast, some people accused Kardashian of being a hypocrite for the "witch hunt" she allegedly undertook with former husband Kanye West against Taylor Swift during their years-long feud. They argued it was hypocritical of Kardashian to feel attacked for her Balenciaga comments after she released audio of conversation between West and Swift, that was recorded without the singer's knowledge.

"Lol what a hypocrite," said one comment on Twitter.

"Her talking about cancel culture is hilarious to me like she didn't participate in the most massive one ive seen to date," wrote another person.

And another added: "Honey you started a whole a** s*** canceling taylor swift and you cant cancel a brand that's using kids in a very dark and awful way.

The incident they were referring to was just one major incident in many including West and Swift.

The rapper released his infamous song, Famous, on his The Life of Pablo album when he rapped: "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that b*** famous."

West claimed Swift knew about the lyric and not only had given him approval to record it, but it was her idea all along.

Swift denied this account, but Kardashian stepped in to show support for her husband and spoke about it to GQ magazine in 2016.

"She totally approved that," she told GQ. "She totally knew that that was coming out. She wanted to all of a sudden act like she didn't. I swear, my husband gets so much shit for things [when] he really was doing proper protocol and even called to get it approved."

"What rapper would call a girl that he was rapping a line about to get approval?" she added.

Then a month later Kim released footage of West and Swift's phone call where Swift allegedly gave her blessing.

In the video, West appears to run the line "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex" past Swift, who responds: "It sounds like a compliment."

Swift claims she was never informed about the "made that b**** famous" line. In a now-deleted statement on Instagram, the singer said: "Where is the video of Kanye telling me he was going to call me 'that b***h' in his song? It doesn't exist because it never happened.

"Being falsely painted as a liar when I was never given the full story or played any part of the song is character assassination."

Then in 2020 an allegedly unedited clip of the phone call leaked on social media. Swift fans claimed it proved the singer was telling the truth that she never approved the lyric and was not informed about the controversial line.