At nine years old, North West is a beauty mega-influencer in the making. On TikTok—where she has already racked up more than 15 million followers—her unhinged skin care and makeup tutorials seem to foreshadow a future career in aesthetics, comedy, or both.
Now it seems North may be preparing to enter the family business—that is, monetizing every aspect of her life—sooner rather than later. According to reports, budding momager Kim Kardashian has filed four trademarks in her daughter’s name: two for “advertising services” and “entertainment,” a third for a toy brand, and a fourth for a skin care line that is slated to include “non-medicated skin preparations, skin moisturizers, skin lotions, skin creams, skin cleansers.”
Which raises the question: Why does a nine-year-old need an elaborate skin care routine in the first place, much less a branded line of products to sell for profit?
North clearly knows more about beauty than your average nine-year-old. And if Millie Bobbie Brown can launch her skin care and makeup line Florence by Mills at age 15—with the research and development process having started even earlier—it’s not so hard to imagine a precocious preteen like North campaigning to do the same. The play village erected in the backyard of Kim Kardashian’s family compound features a life-size KKW Beauty boutique, allowing her children to cosplay as beauty moguls from birth, basically.
@kimandnorth ♬ Santa Tell Me - Ariana Grande
Preemptively filing trademarks on behalf of their children is a Kar-Jenner family tradition. All of North’s siblings, including seven-year-old Saint, five-year-old Chicago, and three-year-old Psalm, have scores of trademarks registered in their names. Kylie Jenner has been laying the groundwork for her five-year-old daughter’s forthcoming retail empire—Stormi World—since the child’s first birthday.
The logic is sound, if a bit sinister. Influencers including Kim herself routinely find themselves embroiled in trademark suits as they look to monetize their personal brands. Copyrighting North’s name in various categories now will grant her the freedom to use or not use it for branding purposes later. It’s entirely possible that Kardashian is registering these trademarks for businesses North hopes to pursue a few years down the line as a teenager.
But it’s hard to ignore the long shadow of capitalism these trademarks cast over the Kardashian kids’ futures. It feels premature, to say the least. Then again, I suppose it was only a matter of time.
This article was originally published on Glamour US.
