"This nipple bra in honor of climate change"

Deconstructing Kim Kardashian's nipple bra ad from a climate psychology perspective.

Welcome back to Climate Psyched, the newsletter where we explore all things psychological, behavioral and emotional related to the climate and ecosystem crises.

It’s been a few heavy weeks as the conflict in Israel and Palestina has intensified, not only bringing about indescribable suffering and death by those affected, but also stirring up intense emotions, triggering polarization and hate in many countries.

When things are very emotionally heated it can be hard to say anything, due to fear of being accused of saying the wrong thing or increasing someone else’s pain, but staying silent also speaks loudly for those hurting right now. It takes courage to speak up, but also to actively listen to the voices of those affected and take in their perspectives, voices and wishes. I’ve been struggling to find words that feels worth expressing, but there are many voices from those directly affected who are reminding us that several things can be true at the same time; the Hamas attack on the 7th of October was horrible, the war on Gaza is indescribably horrific, all this violence is increasing both antisemitism and islamophobia - but we are many many that wish for peace, solidarity and a pluralistic and diverse world.

In the midst of this heaviness, something absolutely absurd suddenly appeared, that in one way offered some repose from the ongoing suffering, or at least an opportunity to think about greenwashing instead of genocide for a minute.

I’m talking about Kim Kardashian’s nipple bra for climate change. Does it sound ridiculous? Let’s break it down.

Situation

A few days ago Kim Kardashian, reality TV star, influencer and entrepreneur launched a new bra for her brand Skims. More specifically a so called “nipple bra”, with built in nipples. Does this particular undergarment has anything to do with climate change? Well, according to Kardashian, it sorta kinda does.

In the ad, which was posted as an instagram reel, Kardashian is sitting by a computer, wearing the nipple bra under a tight top, tapping away at the keyboard and talking to the camera, saying: ”The earth’s temperature is getting hotter and hotter, sea levels are rising, the ice sheets are shrinking. And I’m not a scientist, but I do believe everyone can use their skillset to do their part. That’s why I’m introducing a brand new bra with a built-in nipple, so no matter how hot it is, you’ll always look cold.” Slowly walking towards the camera she continues: “Some days are hard, but these nipples are harder. And unlike the icebergs, these aren’t going anywhere.”

There’s a lot to unpack in those 30 seconds.

New York Magazine quickly picked up on the launch and tweeted “this nipple bra in honor of climate change might be the most interesting launch from the brand yet.” Now there’s a sentence we didn’t think we’d ever read, but here we are.

I’m not entirely sure if the ad’s meant to be ironic, if it aims at bashing climate change, if it’s pure greenwashing or just a humorous way of showing how insane our tendency to try and consume our way out of the climate crisis. But for the purpose of this text I’m going to presume that the climate framing is real, so that we can begin to deconstruct what she’s actually saying from a climate psychology perspective.

Explanation

Looking closer at some of the quotes from the ad, we can find several cognitive biases and climate delaying discourse.

“I do believe everyone can use their skillset to do their part” - Yes, we agree! Everyone has a role to play in tackling the climate crisis. And not everyone can or should do the same thing. The climate crisis is enormously unequal, with the richest 1% emitting twice as much as the poorest 50% globally. This means that, in general, the richer you are the more you emit, and the more potential you have at reducing your own emissions. But it’s generally also the case that very rich people have a high potential of being a role model that influences others, if they use not only their own individual actions, but also their platforms and voice to push for structural change.

Looking at this model that we’ve presented in a previous post, Kardashian is one of the individual top emitters of the world, but also a person with immense power of influencing her followers’ behaviors. If wanting to use her skillset do her part for climate, she could’ve used her role model potential for more things than selling bras.

I doubt that anyone believes that buying a nipple bra will have any real effect on dealing with climate change, but let’s say that some do think that they’re doing a good thing for climate by purchasing the built-in nipples that - in the words of New York Magazine - “honors climate change”. That could potentially trigger a cognitive bias called the Negative footprint illusion, that was first introduced in the research literature in 2016. It refers to the tendency to estimate the total environmental impact of items as lower when you add a perceived “green” item to a “non-green” item. For example: people tend to perceive a bag of groceries as having a lower environmental impact if you add a bag of organic carrots to it, giving the organic carrots a sort of green halo that magically lowers the environmental impact of the non-green items. This is one of many biases that skews our human perception and makes our decision making irrational, whilst upholding our belief that we’re acting rationally and doing good things.

“No matter how hot it gets you’ll always look cold” - (And by looking cold, Kardashian means that you’ll look hot in the nipple bra.) This quote is associating global heating with positive benefits, which can be sneaky to say the least.

It’s quite a common climate delaying discourse to frame climate change as something that also brings about positive change. For example referring to a milder climate opening up possibilities of growing crops in previously too cold places, or saying that winters will be more tolerable in the northern parts of the globe when the global temperature rises. The associations of rising temperatures can sometimes also be cognitively tricky to perceive as something negative, since the first things that comes to mind for many is that a warmer climate sounds nice, kinda like a sunny summer day. Of course this framing disregards how potential benefits are widely overshadowed by the negative impacts of intensified extreme weather and instability of the ecosystems. Kinda like a sunny summer day where birds are falling down from the sky because of the heat.

“Unlike the icebergs, these nipples aren’t going anywhere” - This quote represents a kind of doomism paired with a redirection of focus.

Doomism; framing climate change as already too late to do anything about can be seen both in the climate denying lobby and parts of the climate movement. It proposes for us to accept that it’s too late to save the planet, but mostly encourages passivity and hopelessness. There are several aspects to discuss on the subject of accepting a potential imminent societal collapse that there aren’t room for in this post. But perhaps most importantly in the Kardashian framing is that it draws attention away from the threat that we need to address for our collective safety (the melting of the icebergs), to a constructed and non-vital need (making our nipples look hard). Navigating climate change is a constant challenge of keeping the eyes on the ball and resisting the temptation to be distracted by thousands of instagram reels trying to impose needs on us to make us buy more stuff.

We might be seeing fatal sea level rise, but at least our nipples will look hard!

Action

• We all need to pause, breathe and laugh to endure the heaviness of this world, but don’t let greenwashing consumer ads distract you from the big questions.

• If we are to be temporarily distracted by nipple bras, let it at least be an opportunity of learning some new climate psychology perspectives.

• Remember that consumerism isn’t a way out of climate change, and be aware of the negative footprint illusion.

• Use your skillset to do your part for climate, but please let it be something other than inventing new underwear.

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That’s it for this month. I don’t think I’ve ever written the word nipple this much in any text ever, and I hope I’ll never have to do it again - but if you feel like you learnt a thing or two, it was worth it!

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See you in November!