Kim Kardashian: A nudity timeline

​By now, the facepalm-inducing silliness of Kim Kardashian's tearful protest on Sunday's episode of Kourtney and Kim Take New York at being shown in the nude in the October issue of W magazine has been extensively remarked upon. For one thing, she posed nude for the magazine, so it's hard to fathom how she could be surprised that they showed her nude. Nevertheless, Kardashian said she felt betrayed: "She promised I would be covered with artwork, but you can see nipple," she bellowed through the tears, as if everyone living hadn't seen Kim Kardashian's nipple before. "It's full-on porn," she added, as if she hadn't done full-on porn before.

Ah, Kim. We were all young once, and perhaps she can be forgiven for not realizing that the nudity she became famous for would, some years later, still be the basis upon which she is famous, even if she has done a bunch of other stuff in that time span, like several reality shows and... uh, pretty much just the reality shows. Still, if she wanted to stop being famous for her frequent nudity, one proactive solution might be to quit posing nude -- which, by the way, she promised on the show never to do again, "even if it's for Vogue," whatever that means.

If her track record is any indication, we doubt she'll make good on that. Let's review:

Mid-2007: Until around the summer of 2007, you didn't know the name of Kim Kardashian, but that was before her sex tape with boyfriend Ray J got leaked to Vivid Entertainment, springboarding her into the dubious ranks of her friend Paris Hilton, another vapid celebutante who had become famous a couple of years before for having sex in front of a video camera. Kardashian notably sued for ownership of the tape, but later settled for $5 million.

​December, 2007: Well this might be a little cynical: While she had supposedly been defamed and (she would later say) "humiliated" by the leak of the tape, she went ahead and rode that wave by posing for Playboy before the year was over.

​April, 2010: After a period of nudity-related semi-dormancy, Kardashian opened up for the first time about her Playboy shoot in the April issue of Harper's Bazaar, telling that magazine she felt "embarrassed" about the shoot, and that her mother had talked her into it (weird, but whatever). Ironically, she posed nude in that exact issue of Harper's Bazaar, so clearly she wasn't all that embarrassed about it.

​September, 2010: A few months later, Playboy somewhat spontaneously released photos left over from the 2007 shoot, to Kardashian's rumored dismay, though those rumors might have been a result of her remarks to Harper's earlier -- there were hearsay reports, but no quote from Kardashian herself.

October, 2010: It's interesting, though, that when those Playboy photos were released was right about the time she was probably doing the W spread that would appear the next month -- for a girl who was suddenly embarrassed about posing nude for one magazine while simultaneously posing nude for another, she sure is doing a lot of posing nude this year.

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