Khloé Kardashian does not want the internet to see a recent photo of herself that appears to be unedited, pushing for Instagram accounts to remove the image—or else face legal consequences, according to Page Six.
The image of Kardashian began circulating over the weekend and was said to have been posted by her maternal grandmother, Mary Jo “MJ” Shannon. Looking makeup-free, Kardashian smiles while wearing a leopard-print bikini. The photo is undoubtedly more candid than the glammed up, smoothed, and edited images the mother-of-one normally posts.
But as fan pages started resharing the image, Kardashian’s team quickly began trying to get the accounts to take it down. Tracy Romulus, the chief marketing officer for KKW Brands, reportedly messaged one account writing, “Hi babe can you pls delete that last post on Khloe. The image was stolen and doctored and originated from a fake IG account.”
Instagram also allegedly alerted accounts about the post being removed because it was reported for copyright infringement, stating the image belonged to Kardashian, with an email linking back to a member of her team. (Twitter has since removed tweets containing the image, seen by The Daily Beast, as well as other tweets that criticized Kardashian over the pushback to the photo.)
The Daily Beast understands Kardashian’s camp reached out to at least two Instagram accounts about the photo.
One of the accounts, which posted the image side-by-side with a recent edited photo of Kardashian, removed the photo and wrote, “today was so fucking exhausting. Don’t ask me abt the situation bc I legally cannot talk abt it.”
In a statement to Page Six, Romulus doesn’t deny Kardashian’s team pushed accounts to remove the image, saying while it was a “beautiful” photo of the reality star, it was posted by “mistake.”
“The color edited photo was taken of Khloé during a private family gathering and posted to social media without permission by mistake by an assistant,” she said. “Khloé looks beautiful but it is within the right of the copyright owner to not want an image not intended to be published taken down.”
Another source admitted to Page Six that while Kardashian’s unapproved photo did have some edits, it was not the standard for the images that she would normally post.
The Daily Beast reached out to Kardashian’s team for further comment.
Liartingz, a sizable Instagram account that regularly posts unedited photos of celebrities comparing the airbrushed images against the actual photo, said their photo of Kardashian was also removed by Instagram over copyright violations. They said it was one of the rare times they had ever heard of a celebrity claiming “copyright infringement” over such photos.
“She’s only proving everyone their point,” they said. “It’s easy to sell women this idea of ‘I’m confident and you’ll be too, just buy my jeans and my lip gloss.’ But if you’re so secure in who you are, why does a picture, which by the way looks gorgeous, bother you so much?”
“Another celebrity proving what they portray on social media is a fake persona they’ve created,” they added.
