Last week, for a very brief moment, something unusual appeared in the middle of Times Square. It wasn’t a marquee announcing the latest TV celebrity joining a Broadway show, or a billboard featuring a lingerie-clad model. And it wasn’t one of those cartoon mascots — the costumed Disney princesses, cowboys and space creatures — who pose for photos with tourists.
And yet, it combined aspects of all the above. For two days starting on March 4, a 60-foot rubber, inflatable version of Kim Kardashian — America’s leading celebrity-sexpot-corporate icon — occupied this famous plot of land. Nearly nude save for a tiny blue bikini, Balloon Kim was there to advertise the new swimsuit collection launched by Ms. Kardashian’s fashion line, Skims.
Balloon Kim held court from an elevated platform emblazoned with the Skims label. She lay on her right side, knees slightly bent, in a pose that emphasized the figure’s torso and maximized the exposed surface area of her body. Just one part of this figure resisted our gaze: Her face, which was obscured by her raised arms, crossed at eye level, as if shielding her from a tropical glare.
Of course, the March sun in Manhattan barely glares at all. But the same cannot be said of the hordes of passers-by, who stared and took photos of this massive, pool-float version of the glamorous billionaire. At any given moment, dozens of people perched around the perimeter of the platform, cellphone cameras aloft.
You might think such a scene — lines of strangers ogling an exposed female body lying in the middle of the street — would feel unsettling or prurient, like the opening of an episode of “Law and Order.” Instead, the atmosphere felt mildly jovial, as people exchanged amused glances, shrugged, and snapped photos. Nothing untoward was happening here, because Balloon Kim seemed protected from any personal transgression. Naturally, being 60 feet long helped. This creature was more invincible giantess than damsel in distress — with the onlookers resembling Lilliputians discovering Gulliver.
But Balloon Kim seemed impervious to transgression for reasons beyond her imposing size. While a good likeness of the original, Balloon Kim did not so much depict a person as it did a commodity, an abandoned outer shell — a product designed specifically for consumption by crowds of people — in one of the most commercial zones in the world. And it was serving the function for which it was designed.
By covering her famous face, Balloon Kim refused to return the onlookers’ gaze. She depicted no personal expression, and blocked even the depiction of any access to her interiority. This structure was not a portrait or a sculpture of Ms. Kardashian, but rather a very faithful recreation of the workings of Ms. Kardashian’s empire, which is built on the meticulously crafted project she has made of her body — a collection of highly public, highly exposed curves and spheres, sculpted and polished to perfection, displayed according to Ms. Kardashian’s diktats, and offered up as a series of ideals to be aspired to and emulated via the purchase of products.
Ms Kardashian long ago turned over “that” body — the commercial construction of it — to the masses, letting it crystallize into a corporate logo, whose instant recognizability has earned her a fortune.
For those who remember the “old,” louche Times Square, back before it became a shopping mall, the Skims balloon sculpture may conjure too another association: the inflatable sex dolls displayed in the windows of the many porn shops that once lined these streets. Propped next to smutty photos or fetish costumes, those dolls had visible faces, but they were blank and lifeless, the least important part of their anatomy. Those expressionless faces spoke of a world where women were silent, penetrable things — objects to be bought and used, easily replaced by a few feet of rubberized vinyl and an air pump.
Such small-scale sex shops have all but disappeared from Times Square, replaced by a sea of neon-festooned, family-friendly emporia, by the behemoth of corporate America. And Balloon Kim Kardashian puts a final, finishing touch on this transition — a giant inflatable figure depicting not an anonymous sex object, but the seamless, poreless, sanitized effigy of a capitalist titan, who, after acquiring early fame from a leaked sex tape, knew precisely how to turn her own aesthetic into an approachable, aspirational look for young women around the world. She is that corporate behemoth in inflatable doll form — a fusion of old and new Times Square.
But Balloon Kim is Ms. Kardashian’s own doll — she owns the rights to it, profits from it, and presents it as a pure, impenetrable surface, self-contained and aloof. A pneumatic odalisque for our times.
