Jameela Jamil Defended Kim Kardashian And Said That She Isn’t “Responsible For The Beauty Standard”

For context, the 38-year-old star was working as an English teacher when she got her big break at the age of 22 after being scouted by a TV producer. 

After making her television debut as a presenter on the British TV show T4, Jameela moved into radio, and then acting — with her most prominent role Tahani Al-Jamil in the US sitcom The Good Place. 

Throughout her career, Jameela has used her platform to speak out against the pressure that women are under to look a certain way, and she has repeatedly criticized those who promote unhealthy and unattainable lifestyles. 

“I have the best advice for women in business,” Kim began at the time. “Get your fucking ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.”

“I think if you grew up in Beverly Hills with super successful parents in what was simply a smaller mansion… nobody needs to hear your thoughts on success/work ethic,” Jameela retorted on X at the time. “This same 24 hours in the day shit is a nightmare. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the world grew up with a VERY different 24 hours.”

On her Instagram page, Jameela also took aim at Kim and her family by claiming that they mislead their followers. 

After acknowledging that the KarJenners are “a super impressive family of businesswomen and are products of a ridiculously good start and a genius manager in their mother as well as their own hard work and personal sacrifices,” she added: “Plus a LOT of photoshop and a decision to not care about misleading people about their beauty claims whilst never disclosing how much secret work goes into their appearances… that they make most of their money from."

Jameela also accused the famous sisters of making “a huge amount of money” from promoting “questionable” dieting and fitness products, concluding: “They shouldn’t be asked about their secret to success. They shouldn’t answer those questions. It’s all obvious to everyone, and I hope nobody holds themselves to the standards of people who were raised by millionaires.”

Speaking on Rylan Clark’s How To Be… podcast, Jameela said that the celebrity world has gone backward amid the introduction of Ozempic. 

Ozempic is a drug used to lower blood sugar levels in adults with Type 2 diabetes, but in recent years, there has been a surge in celebrities utilizing the drug for weight-loss purposes. 

“You can see the impact of it through the industry because I went to get fitted for an event, and the samples are this big again, Baby Gap size,” Jameela said. “I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe how small the samples were again. I was like: Oh my god, this feels like when I joined the industry 16 years ago. I couldn’t get a leg in.”

“We’ve totally gone back. Totally, totally, totally gone back,” she went on. “Because they know that now everyone has got access to the thing that means they can get into the sample, and the problem with this is, that’s the image that the world is seeing on the red carpet, in the magazines, and that becomes the beauty ideal.”

“And women who work in offices and shops, and girls who are at school look at that, and they see all these celebrities, all the same, with the same uniform body. Even if they are different ages, different heights, different ethnicities, they’ve all got the same bodies — so that must be the correct body,” Jameela said. “And [they think] there’s something wrong with me because I don’t look like that, and so that’s why these samples are dangerous.”

“So it’s a bit weird that all of the focus is on Kim Kardashian, and none of the focus is on the designer or the stylist who put her in that,” she added. “It’s just strange to me because we feel so powerless against institutions and against industries and so it’s easier to pick an individual and make them the problem.”

“And I have sometimes blamed Kim Kardashian for things,” Jameela went on to admit. “But only when she’s literally, specifically, selling something. But other than that, I don’t hold her responsible for the beauty standard. I hold the media responsible for the beauty standard. She’s just living; anyone could become the beauty standard — it depends on who the media picks.”

“It was, I think, unexpected for me to be the one defending her,” she then acknowledged. “At some point, we have to take responsibility for the fact that we're the ones who click on these celebrities, we're the ones who give them algorithmic attention, we're the ones who buy the magazines that have them on the cover. So the media is only ever going to supply what we demand, and if we continue taking — interest even if it's just to hate on someone — then we are perpetuating their relevance.”

“We make people, we can break people,” Jameela concluded. “I don't think the public realize how powerful they are, and it's time that they do because we get to choose our people, our celebrities.”