Once again, it’s all eyes on Kim Kardashian – this time, for officially becoming a billionaire. Reported by Forbes, who announced her inclusion in their World’s Billionaires list yesterday, Kim’s has amassed her vast wealth through her two massively lucrative businesses, KKW Beauty and Skims, as well as income from Keeping Up With The Kardashians, real estate and various endorsement deals.

People were quick to criticise the news – after all, the last thing the world needs is another billionaire, right? – and many others threw shade over the ways Kim has made her riches. “How did she become famous, again?” one Tweet teased. “Oh, a rich person became richer. Great” another said. Other critics raised the opinion that Kim had made money (at least in part) by appropriating Black culture. “A lot of things Black people have been doing for years have become worldwide trends simply because the Kardashians started doing them, but of course they make millions from doing so,” explains dancer and aspiring writer Sharia Johnson. “It hurts a little bit.”

Let’s address the elephant in the room – the matter of how she came to fame, which can only be described as through dubious means (namely, her leaked sex tape with then boyfriend rapper Ray J). Then, there’s the fact that throughout her career she has posed provocatively (including for controversial men’s magazine Playboy and, a few years later, she broke the internet posing naked on the front cover of Paper magazine with champagne spraying across her body). Some accuse her of hindering modern feminism by playing into traditional male fantasies of the female form and ultimately, objectifying herself.

In principle, I agree with all of these points. I don’t believe in the increasing trend for hoarding unimaginable wealth when there is so much inequality and poverty in the world. I have no doubt that the Kardashians along with many, many other celebrities have appropriated and profited from aspects of Black culture. I think tweaked bodies and filtered skin is damaging to our mental health, sets us up for failure, and fosters a damaging relationship with our bodies. I know I should be one of those people Tweeting my disdain. And yet, I remain completely and utterly in love with Kim. I just can’t seem to help it.

In all honesty, I’ve been a Kim stan from the moment I watched Episode 1 of Keeping Up With The Kardashains. The first series coincided with my Fresher’s year of university in 2008, and I would rush home from lectures to illegally stream new episodes. I loved that she was unapologetic about her vanity (“Kim your sister is going to jail, stop taking selfies”), I loved how she was playful and sassy but still hard-working (those Dash shelves didn’t stock themselves) and I admired her family-first attitude to life. I loved the words and phrases she used and soon was starting every other sentence with “Bible”. I based by entire aesthetic around her. I had hair extensions, eyelash extensions, nail extensions and I bought Kardashian Konfidential, the book she compiled with her sisters, which offered beauty advice and makeup tips among anecdotes from their childhoods.

As I’ve grown older, my priorities and tastes have changed but, then again, so have Kim’s. She has always used her celebrity to raise awareness of pertinent social issues and make impressive charitable efforts. Throughout all 20 seasons of the reality TV show, the family have continued to support homeless charities, visiting shelters and volunteering at soup kitchens. She has donated millions of dollars to charities that provide vital services to the homeless as well as to women’s shelters across LA. She is an advocate of Black Lives Matter, attending rallies and speaking out publicly on police brutality. She works with charity Everytown for gun safety and support gun control legislation and she donated $500,000 to relief efforts in the midst of the California wildfires.

Now, Kim has focused her efforts on the justice system, tirelessly campaigning and using her enormous influence to secure clemency for many unjustly imprisoned people, including Alice Marie Johnson, who had been sentenced to life in prison for a non-violent drug offence and had displayed model behaviour including becoming an ordained minister while incarcerated. Kim is also studying to become a human rights lawyer, revising for the Bar exam while simultaneously juggling being a mother four children under the age of seven, dealing with the pain of a divorce from her husband and father to her children Kanye West, whose own struggles with bipolar disorder have presented huge pressures on the family.

Then there’s the small matter of managing those multi-million dollar global businesses KKW Beauty and Skims (a shapewear brand offering innovative solutions for people all sizes). To say she’s a role model as far as work ethic, tenacity and drive would be an understatement.

Perhaps it’s the incongruity of it all that keeps me so hooked. On the one hand, she’s a hard-working, business savvy entrepreneur with a vast social conscience. On the other, she’s controversial, salacious and selfish. Maybe if she was one way or the other, I would have got bored of following her. Maybe her duality is exactly what interests me, resonating with the pressure I feel to adhere to society’s confusing and conflicting demands of modern women and to ‘having it all’. Whatever the source of my fascination, I for one am excited to see what the future has in store for Kim and in this age of influencers, where a selfie and a #spon dominate our feeds, it’s refreshing to see an influencer (perhaps the ultimate influencer), using their platform for positive change and meaningful progress, and not solely for personal gain (although that’s certainly a part of it).