Jameela Jamil says Kim Kardashian is a ‘double agent for the patriarchy’

TV presenter Jameela Jamil has been criticising diet brands that use girl power to sell appetite suppressants for some time. In particular, she’s taken aim at Kim Kardashian, calling her “a terrible and toxic influence on young girls” last May in response to an Instagram post promoting Flat Tummy Co’s infamous “Appetite Suppressant Lollipops”. And now, Jamil has spoken out again, suggesting Kardashian – among others – is “benefitting off, profiting off, and selling a patriarchal narrative to other women”.

These “double agents for the patriarchy”, Jamil says in the interview for Channel 4’s Ways to Change the World podcast, build money on “the blood and tears of young women who believe in them, who follow them, who look up to them like the big sister they never had”.

Of course, this being the internet after all, the comments have proved pretty polarising. Some have lauded Jamil on social media, calling her the “hero the UK needs” and agreeing that the Kardashian’s peddling of diet products is harmful.

Some, however, have criticised her for allegedly targeting the Kardashians (and other people deemed to be having “the wrong kind of sex”) disproportionately and unfairly labelling them a tool or perpetuator of the patriarchy.

In the podcast, which was published August 29, Jamil also discusses her own eating disorder in her teens, her #iweigh campaign, and the whitewashing practices of publications she’s appeared in.