Jonathan Van Meter's Kim Kardashian book asks: who really is the world's most famous woman?

Jonathan Van Meter's got a track record for getting famous people to spill. He's the guy who got Linda Evangelista to drop that legendary $10,000-a-day line back in 1990. Since then he's sat down with Taylor Swift, Michelle Obama, Lady Gaga — the usual suspects for a Vogue writer. So when he profiled Kim Kardashian for the magazine in 2019, something clicked.

Kim called him after it ran. "There's no better feeling in the world than when someone gets you," she told him, according to Van Meter's new book Citizen Kim. He apparently fired back that he was writing a book about her whether she liked it or not. Spoiler: she cooperated.

And honestly, the premise holds up. Kardashian didn't just become famous — she basically rewrote how fame works. Her family started filming their lives in 2007 with Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and they're still at it now with The Kardashians. She saw social media coming and rode it from the jump. Her shapewear line Skims hit a $5bn valuation last year. That's not luck.

But here's where Van Meter's book gets interesting. He points out something obvious yet kind of wild: despite Kim being everywhere — literally everywhere — there's barely any serious writing about her. No real cultural criticism. Just gossip columns and tabloid stuff. No one's actually stopped to ask what all this means.

That's the book's central question, basically. You get backstage access to her personal world, but what does it tell you? Van Meter had the access. He had the platform. The question is whether he actually answers anything, or if Citizen Kim just becomes another glossy profile with better paper.