Bourdieu’s Habitus Theory and Instagram

One of the main selling points in Kim Kardashian Hollywood is the option to make your character like yourself, to uniquely customise a character to be as much or as little like you as you wish. With many items of clothing, hairstyles and make up to select you can style your idol to represent whatever you like. As a result, this makes the game more personal to the user.

But nevertheless there is a catch in this, all of the clothes in the game are a digital reworking of clothes Kim or her sisters have already worn. This arises the question, does the game allow us to be individual or are we just taking influence from Kim and her well-documented style?

Instagram is one of the many platforms in which Kim shows off these clothes that you can try in the game. As an influential media icon with her millions of followers, it is determined that Kim has a certain amount of power over the audiences she posts to on Instagram. It’s no secret that sponsorships on Instagram pay quite a large amount of money, especially given Kim’s following. Therefore, promotion for the KKH game is simple for her; whenever she adds more content all Kim has to do is upload a photo, and millions are updating their game. Could this be an example of capitalism? Is Kim fooling the followers into believing she created the content for them and not for the inevitable profit?

Pierre Bordieu’s Habitus theory could explain to a certain extent the scheme behind Kim’s popularity. “The habitus is an invisible classificatory system that shapes consumer tastes” (Laughey 2007, p. 187). Bordieu explains that we learn to consume media based on our social and economic standing. As Kim is economically higher than those in her audience, they are likely to consume based on her tastes. Kim uses Instagram as her platform to provide the masses with her views, for example this Instagram post where she states there are new outfits for you to download with “#balmain”. Balmain is a high-end fashion designer, and Kim allows the users to get a taste of this high-end and unaffordable style within the game. Followers are likely to admire these lavish styles due to the habitus’ influence. As a result, Kim manages to attract an audience out of her economical field, by using multiplatform advertisement.

Herman and Chomsky proposed the propaganda model of media, it is suggested, “media participates in… campaigns that are helpful to elite interests” (Haralambos and Holborn 2013). Accordingly, this explains to an extent the popularity and blind following of Kim Kardashian. As mass media are used to promoting “elite interests” it makes sense that Kardashian would receive a large following across multiple platforms. As well as this it explains as to why we would be attracted to the game’s ideology – if we are enjoy this glamour in other forms of mass media then we are obviously going to enjoy it within the gaming format. The same idea represents itself in other games, for example the glamorised violence in Grand Theft Auto (1997-).