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Kim Kardashian has some regrets about how she handled early commentary about her sister Khloé Kardashian’s appearance.
The SKIMS founder, 45, revealed during her Oct. 15 interview on Call Her Daddy that she felt she and her sister Kourtney Kardashian “should’ve maybe stuck up” for Khloé when interviewers and the public made comments to and about the 41-year-old earlier in their careers.
While speaking with host Alex Cooper, Kim shared that Khloé, now 41, recently found and shared a link to an old television appearance she made.
“They just looked at Khloé and they were just like, ‘How does it feel, Khloé, to look so different that Kourtney and Kim?’ The way that they were asking questions, you could never get away with that today,” Kim said.
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The Kardashians star told Cooper during the new podcast sitdown that she was “maybe sometimes” aware that Khloé was being treated differently during interviews based on her appearance, but that “her responses were so great.”
Recounted Kim, “It was about weight. It was about looks. It was about everything.”
“I guess Kourtney and I should’ve maybe stuck up for her publicly a little bit more when that was happening. I think we just wanted to … we didn’t know. These were our first set of interviews. Our first time on these shows,” Kim said. “What can we say, what can’t we? But just to look back and to know that’s how interviews were conducted, is kind of crazy.”
It’s unclear what specific TV appearance Kim was referencing, though she claimed to Cooper it was from The View. The Kardashian sisters often appeared on The View and numerous other daytime programs during the initial years of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Kim has appeared on The View as recently as Oct. 28.
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During a PEOPLE cover interview in 2015, Khloé explained that she didn’t realize she looked different than her sisters “until I went on TV and the media started saying that about me.”
“Being compared to my sisters was something I was used to. But being compared in such a harsh way I just thought, ‘Okay, that’s my role.’ So I started saying it before people. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m the fat, funny sister. Who cares?’ I almost let that take ownership of me,” she said at the time. “[In reality] I wasn’t fat; I wasn’t obese. But I would let society make me believe that I was.”
During the March 26 episode of her Khloé in Wonder Land podcast, Khloé opened up to guest Remi Bader about her own body image, explaining that she was recently telling a friend that she felt “so much more confident when I was fat and chubby.”
“It’s crazy that we’re so mean to ourselves, but I think so much of it is society constantly nitpicking you,” the Good American co-founder explained. “Whether it’s, like you said, you’re thinner, ‘How dare you get so thin?’ but when you’re bigger they call you all these names, they shame you. That’s when you sort of just have to throw your hands up in the air.”
Also in the Wonder Land podcast, Khloé detailed how she was able to be in “control” of her weight through fitness, but that it’s “not that easy.” “I’ve been working out for like 10 years but it’s baby steps. It took me a very long time to get where I am, and people forget that,” she said. “And all of the work that it takes from within. Your brain is a muscle and you have to retrain that to even love yourself, to look at yourself.”
She added that when she began to lose weight, critics on social media would complain that she was “not the same person” anymore. “They always were like, ‘We liked the fat Khloé.’ Like, well, that’s not nice either. Always as if I let so many people down,” she added.
“But you just have to worry about not letting yourself down.”
