Today in news that will shock no one: Kim Kardashian is the top-earning reality star in all of America. For the first time since it began tallying the salaries of mega-earners across the nation, Forbes compiled a (pretty intuitive) list of baller reality TV stars. Kim, her momager and all four of her sisters occupy the top six spots, thanks to their combined $122.5 million salary.
Kim accounts for a $51 million chunk of the pile, mostly due to the media mogul’s (apparently addictive) virtual reality game, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Kylie, also one of Time‘s Most Influential Teens, amassed $18 million between June 2015 and June 2016, earning her the number two spot. The 19-year-old’s many product lines with Pacsun, Topshop, Puma and Sinful Colors, as well as her cosmetics empire, helped supplement her E! paycheck.
Image: Nick DeSantis for Forbes
Kendall, who also made Forbes’ highest-paid earning models list, comes in third, having banked one million less than her baby sister. The Fendi favorite’s fortune is derived from modeling, KUTWK appearances, her various Kendall & Kylie ventures and her own app. In fourth place is Khloé, who earned $15 million thanks to her recent book, new denim line and a ton of sponsored posts. Directly beneath Khloé is family matriarch Kris who, as you probably know, takes a cut of everyone’s earnings. Kourtney’s relatively paltry $10 million paycheck lands her in sixth place. Despite the fact that Kourt’s expressed her desire for a life sans film crew, the eldest Kardashian sister is the one most reliant on KUWTK for her gluten-free bread and dairy-free butter.
Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel is the lone non-Kardashian-Jenner on the list. Most of Frankel’s wealth comes from her line of Skinnygirl alcohol, which, if you ask us, is in desperate need of a body-positive rebrand. Not one man made the list, not even Rob Kardashian, whose under-$2 million earnings did not place him above the $8.5 million cutoff. It is worth noting that reality competition and game show contestants and hosts were excluded from the rankings. As far as diversity goes, this list offers none, given that most of its constituents draw from the same Armenian-Dutch-English-Irish-Scottish gene pool.
True, Kim’s multi-million dollar paycheck is nowhere near enough to qualify her for a spot on Forbes’ list of America’s richest self-made women. (Taylor Swift, who came in last on that lineup, banked roughly five times more than Kim in 2016 — no hate, no shade.) However, these numbers do speak to the power of reality TV and social media followings (as does, as the author points out, the outcome of the recent U.S. presidential elections). Like fashion’s top bloggers, the Kardashian-Jenners make a killing off of sponsored posts and brand partnerships and hold an almost disturbing amount of sway over consumers. Kim and Kendall, now that you’ve seen the numbers, are you not tempted to get back in on the action?
[ Forbes ]
