A Kardashian History Lesson

How many people in the United States do you think could name every member of the Kardashian/Jenner family? Probably a lot. Now, how many of those people could name the woman that began collecting petitions against slavery at 17 years old and played a crucial role in fighting for women’s suffrage during an era where women had virtually no political power? How about the woman that single-handedly founded an entire religious movement, wrote a textbook and created a publishing company in the early 1800s, before women were considered worthy of being equally respected in the business world? Probably not that many.

I wanted to create a series of pictures featuring the infamous Kardashian family’s faces cut out from an InTouch magazine and pasted onto photographs of women that made a positive impact in history.

The photograph series I created represents the depressing amount of millennials that care more about the amount of likes they got on their last Instagram post than the 2,000 Kurdish Yazidi women captured, abused and held hostage by ISIS soldiers since 2014. Or the Gen Y’s that concern themselves more with the number of Twitter followers they have than the fact that Taiwan elected their first-ever woman president in January of this year.I used symbolism to portray that we choose gossip, tabloids and popularity over history, compassion and awareness.

My point is: turn off The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and actually do this week’s textbook reading for your political science class. Stop refreshing Snapchat and check out today’s headlines on CNN. Everything you do to broaden your knowledge about the government, the food your eating, the wars that are happening on the other side of the world, the poverty rates in the next city over… all these things will bring you closer to becoming an activist for a just and peaceful world.