Crazy for Kim

The savvy star power of Kim Kardashian

f you think being famous for being famous doesn't require talent, you've obviously never stayed up all night with Kim Kardashian. One moment she's hanging around Hollywood with her BFR Paris Hilton, and the next she's hosting the party after the party before the afterparty in Malibu. All this with grace and aplomb. Kim sets the standard for a new type of sawy star power. She may not have a movie, an album or a line of products to hype, but that doesn't stop her from flaunting everything she's got: bubbly charm, exotic good looks (she's of Armenian descent) and sex appeal that keeps the paparazzi flashing till dawn.

"It's bizarre to me," Kim says with a laugh when asked about her celebrity status. She is stretched out in a sundress on a

velvety sota in nerBeverlyTHills apartment, coyly hugging an expensive-looking pil­low to her chest. A diamond-studded ring glitters on her left middle toe. "I'm a girl who likes to go out with my family and girlfriends and have a good time," the 27-year-old says. "And somehow that has become a fascination for people."

Partly it's the crowd Kim hangs with. Hav­ing grown up in Beverly Hills in a well-known family, she was bom famous by association.

she's the daughter of the late Robert Kardashian, one of O.J. Simpson's high-profile trial lawyers, and the stepdaughter of 1976 Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner. At 14 she had her birthday party at family friend Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. Her first boyfriend was Tito Jackson's son. These days, when Kim's not strolling the red carpet with Paris, whom she's known since preschool, she's often spotted with friends like the Pussycat Dolls, Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan and Serena Williams. Even an evening out with Kim's siblings is a cause celebre. She has nine brothers and sisters—three full siblings as well as two half sisters, three stepbrothers and one stepsister from Jenner. "We're like our own version of Entourage," Kim says, which explains why piis fall E! launched a reality series about her family, Keeping Up

With the Kardashians, wmcn premiereain mid-October. "Hopefully, the show will put an end to the misconceptions everybody has about us Hollywood kids," she says. "It's not like we're aliens or something. We're not. We do everything everybody else does. |We just do it a little splashier."

Another thing that has kept Kim's name in the gossip columns: her romantic life. Although she's been linked with a number lot famous (text concluded on page 176)

Melody Thornton of the Pussycat Dolls and Aubrey O'Day of Danity Kane; vamping with the lovely Lindsay Lohan.

Kim Kardashian

(continued Jrom page 156) suitors—pop star Nick Lachey. NFL super­star Reggie Bush and music producer Damon Thomas, to whom she was married from 2000 to 2004—it was Kim's liaison with singer Ray J that drew the most atten­tion. A sex tape they made together that shows the couple frolicking on the beach and so much more found its way onto the Internet. Kim, who has repeatedly denied any involvement in releasing the tape, waged a legal battle to stop its distribution and settled with Vivid Entertainment last spring for a sum rumored to be in the mil­lions. Not that that ended the drama.

"People now perceive me in a certain way, which is frustrating," she says, clip­ping her glossy dark brown hair into a neat pile on her head. "They assume I'm slutty. They don't understand that he was my boyfriend of three years. We were very much in love. But now, because of the tape, if I'm dating someone, he auto­matically assumes I'm going to sleep with him and do all that on the first night."

Men have been making assumptions about Kim for a long time. "I started devel­oping young, when I was 10 or 11," she says. "Everybody used to make fun of me, and as I got older, I'd get all this attention. 1 used to say my prayers before bed and pray I would stop developing. I hated my breasts and always tried to hide them." It wasn't until years later that she learned to appreciate what she insists are all-natural curves. "I always laugh when it says on the Internet that I have fake boobs or butt implants or injected lips, because it's so not true. I've never had plastic surgery."

Kim sneaks a peak at her new Rolex and mentions she has a busy night ahead. Soon enough, she'll be crisscrossing velvet lines at Mr. Chow, the Viper Room, Les Deux or any number of her favorite Hol­lywood hangouts, with her trademark Diet Coke in hand (she doesn't smoke, drink or do drugs, she says). This being a random weeknight. Kim's not planning anything too out-there, certainly nothing like the nights she and Paris spent in Ibiza, Spain recently. "We stayed at Jade Jagger's house up in the hills," Kim recalls. "Dinner was at midnight, and the clubs opened at three. We'd close them down at seven, rest an hour, then dance again until noon. After that we'd sleep on the beach until it was time to do it all over again."

It may sound glamorous, but it's also all Kim has ever known. "Having grown up like this, I find the lifestyle completely normal," she says. "Tonight we'll go out and maybe it will be me and my sisters at one table, the Olsen twins at another, and Paris and Nicky at another. But the truth is, it's just girls having some small talk, just having fun. I honestly don't understand the fuss. But hey, as long as it's here, I can't knock it."