The Kardashian family rose to fame through their reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which premiered in 2007. The show followed the lives of Kourtney, Kim, and Khloe Kardashian and launched their careers in business and modeling. It also helped each family member build successful brands like Kylie Cosmetics and KKW Beauty. While often criticized as famous for fame alone, the family regularly supports charities through donations of over $500,000 and advocacy. Most recently, Kim Kardashian helped free Alice Marie Johnson from a life sentence for nonviolent drug offenses through advocacy at the White House.

1. The KardashiansArticle:
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past decade you'll have probably heard/seen the
Kardashian name several times throughout the last 10 years due to the fact that they are one of
if not the most famous family around. But how exactly did they turn their unique brand of fame
into multimillion-dollar businesses? Most of us will be asking and to this day it is still hard to
explain how and why. So lets start from the beginning:
The first episode of 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians' aired on October 14, 2007 after Kris
Jenner showed an interest in appearing on a television show together with her family. This idea
arose after certain members of her family were already easing themselves into fame. One
member in particular being Robert Kardashian (Kris's first husband) rose to prominence when
he defended O.J Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman during
the OJ Simpson Trial in 1995. Furthermore Kim was getting used to the lavish lifestyle as she
had a newly found friendship with singer Brandy Norwood (in whom Kim was a stylist for) as
well as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan who at the time were extremely relevant A-List
celebrities. Producer Ryan Seacrest, who had has own production company, decided to develop
this idea with the then popular E! Show 'The Osbournes' in mind and in August 2007 it was
announced that the Kardashian and Jenner families would star in a yet-to-be-titled reality show
on E! described as a "new non-scripted family sitcom".
The show was eventually entitled Keeping Up With the Kardashians and premiered on October
14th, 2007. The reality series centers around the members of the Kardashian-Jenner blended
family, focusing on the sisters Kourtney, Kim and Khloé, Kendall and Kylie. Most episodes have a
similar structure in which the family shows off their privileged lifestyle and regularly get into
one or two minor family squabbles before they ultimately wrap the episode up with a
monologue that reinforces the importance of family. After the first series was complete the
show was quickly renewed for a second season one month after its premiere due to it being
one of the highest rated shows the E! Network had produced.
Since the show began airing it became more and more popular with millions of people
becoming infatuated and sometimes obsessed by the families busy, unique and luxury
lifestyles. The show also majorly helped to boost each of the family members as individuals as
almost every one of them has since gone on to found large successful businesses (e.g. Kylie
Cosmetics, KKW Beauty, Good American etc...) as well as becoming some of Americas most well
known models and for them all being continually plastered on the front of almost every
magazine and social media platform possible.
Many people often assume that the reality stars are famous just for the concept of being
famous and are often criticized for exploiting themselves online in order to make more money,
however it is not so well known to the public that the family regularly help and are advocates
for several different charities and preach that they want to use their platforms in order to help
people and make a change for the better in society. Most recently Kim Kardashian-West (wife

2. of Kanye West) helped to free Alice Marie Johnson from prison after she was wrongly
sentenced to life imprisonment in 1996 following non-violent drug offenses. To pursue in
helping free Alice, Kim Kardashian took her quest to have Johnson pardoned all the way to the
White House. On May 30, the 37-year-old met with President Trump in person in the Oval
Office. Following their meeting, on June 6, Trump commuted Johnson’s life sentence for a
nonviolent drug offense, enabling her to be released from prison. Continuing on however this
isn't the only way in which the family have helped put their bigger platform to good use as the
family are regularly trying to support as many charities as possible. For example last year Kim
and her family pledged to donate over $500,000 to the victims of the tropical storm named
'Harvey' which occurred in August 2017 in Houston. Another example is of when Khloe
Kardashian stated in an interview that she "Hates when people throw their charity work in
everyone's faces because they are doing it for publicity or praise" She then went on to add that
she "Gives to give and doesn’t give to get anything back"
As a final thought I believe that the Kardashian family are an extremely successful family who
grew from being small time reality stars to successful business matriarchs who don't necessarily
deserve all the negative criticism they get both online and in the press as they are not only very
smart when it comes to making money and founding businesses but also due to each of their
constant and continuous efforts to help fund and support charities as well as trying to help
innocent and vulnerable people out of some terrible situations whether they do it publicly; or in
most cases privately.