A resurfaced clip from former E! reality show Keeping Up With the Kardashians is attracting renewed criticism online, involving then–married couple Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
In the short video, taken from Episode 3 in Season 10, Kim relayed to her sister Khloé how Ye had gotten annoyed with her personal trainer for advising against her seemingly unrealistic fitness goals.
For some context, Kim had given birth to her first child, North, a little over a year before Season 10 began filming. She’d openly spoken about how her confidence was knocked during her pregnancy after gaining weight and suffering from multiple health issues, including preeclampsia and placenta accreta.
Clearly keen on making a change after North’s birth in the Season 10 episode, Kim recalls telling her personal fitness trainer that she wanted to embark on a stark physical transformation, presumably through a rigorous exercise routine.
However, Kim says the health professional immediately advised against it. Speaking to Khloé, Kim recounts her trainer saying: “There’s no way. I can’t even imagine you 15 pounds lighter.”
And Kim goes on to recall Ye’s response to the fitness instructor’s comments, detailing how he vocally disagreed with her and even suggested getting a new trainer.
“Kanye’s like, ‘Wait a minute. You are the trainer and you’re telling me you can’t imagine her 15 pounds lighter? We need to get another trainer then. Because if I tell you she needs to lose weight in between her toe, you would have figured out a fucking toe weight,’” Kim says.
Clearly amused by the whole thing, both Kim and Khloé simply laugh at Ye's comments.
At the time, viewers at home didn’t receive the commentary well at all. However, despite Twitter being flooded with criticism, the conversation was quickly brushed over.
But now, after the snippet resurfaced on YouTube last week — and has since received over 1.2 million views — it’s once again sparked backlash, especially in light of much that’s unfolded between the pair since the episode originally aired.
First and foremost, viewers commented that Kim and Ye’s treatment of the trainer was disrespectful, calling Ye out for so vocally dismissing the fitness professional’s opinion and Kim for “bragging” about the entire thing.
“But the trainer was right??? they’re professionals, they know what they’re talking about,” one person wrote, adding that Kim’s “goal” was largely unrealistic.
“Are we not going to talk about the fact that the trainer was absolutely correct and within her right to say that,” another echoed.
Someone else wrote, “ahaha so funny look at me bragging about treating employees like shit.”
“But why are they smiling and in support of his toxicity?” one commented in reference to Kim and Khloé’s nonchalant reactions.
While some fans suggested that Ye was right to push the trainer to help Kim achieve her goals, many concluded that even if he wanted to question her advice — which evidently came from a knowledgeable place — he shouldn’t have done so in such a hostile way and that his suggestion of getting an entirely new instructor seemed quite excessive.
Meanwhile, Ye's passionate commentary on the trainer’s advice around Kim’s body reminded some fans of his long-running obsession with her image.
As you might be aware, Ye has long spoken out about his admiration for her famous curvaceous figure and memorably featured her nude in the music video for his 2013 hit “Bound 2.”
“I just love seeing her naked; I love nudity. And I love beautiful shapes. I feel like it's almost a Renaissance thing, a painting, a modern version of a painting. I think it's important for Kim to have her figure,” he told Harper’s Bazaar in 2016.
And not only has Ye expressed his strong interest for Kim’s physical figure, but he’s also fawned over the way that she presents herself, such as her social media appearance and her clothing choices.
In fact, his obsession with styling Kim dates way back to 2012, just months after they’d gotten together. Ye, a renowned stylist, went to great lengths to handpick all of her outfits himself, even reworking her entire closet to get rid of things he didn’t approve of.
After spending years dressing Kim throughout their marriage, Ye even offered to dedicate his entire life to styling her months after they got divorced last February, the mogul revealed in a recent episode of her family’s Hulu show, The Kardashians.
And Ye asserting his opinion over what Kim would wear is something that she’s long praised. She even recently admitted that she’s been totally lost since he stopped styling her months on from their divorce, and had to embark on a journey of self-discovery to figure out her personal stylistic preferences.
But while Kim has evidently taken Ye’s fashion advice on board over the years, the pair have most definitely clashed, too.
A pretty memorable example is the infamous Met Gala dress fiasco that unfolded in 2019. The couple butted heads when Ye told Kim that her now-iconic Thierry Mugler dress — that she spent nine months preparing to wear — was “too sexy” for his liking on the night before the big event.
“The corset, underwear, all of that vibe, I just feel like I went through this transition from being a rapper, looking at all these girls, and then looking at my wife like, ‘Oh, my girl needs to be just like these other girls, showing her body off, showing this, showing that,’” he said at the time.
“I didn't realize that that was affecting my soul and my spirit as someone that's married and loved, the father of what's about to be four kids,” he went on. “A corset is a form of underwear. It's hot. It's like, it's hot for who though?”
And Ye seemingly attempted to micromanage Kim’s Instagram at one point too, with the reality star revealing during an episode of Keeping Up that he’d gotten annoyed when she didn’t post a series of photos that he wanted her to.
Speaking with her sister Kourtney, Kim said that she and Ye got into a fight because she posted a photo of her at the beach instead of posting a bunch of polaroid pictures that she’d taken in a motel. “He wanted them to be all matched up and be all from the motel. That's what the fucking fight was,” she said.
Considering these examples of how Ye has consistently tried to dictate the way that Kim presents herself, his past condemnation of her trainer for simply advising her against an unrealistic and unhealthy fitness regime seems all the more unsettling.
“That's so rude like wow,” one viewer commented under the resurfaced clip. “Kanye obsession with Kim never was a good look.”
And, given that he so persistently expressed his admiration for her figure, some fans have even questioned whether Ye's hostile attitude toward Kim’s trainer for speaking against her “goal” had a more sinister undertone.
“How she repeats what he said: ‘if I tell you she has to lose weight between her toes’ makes it seem like he WAS the one telling her to lose weight. I hope that wasn’t the case,” one person wrote.
“He was literally saying you need to lose weight and freaking out over it and your bragging about that?” another commented.
Additionally, several fans drew attention to Ye's “entitled” attitude, before nodding toward his more recent string of public outbursts against Kim since their divorce.
“So entitled,” one comment read. “this didn’t age well lmao,” another said.
As you might recall, Ye made a series of harsh comments about Kim when she publicly began dating Saturday Night Live comic Pete Davidson in late October, roughly eight months after she filed for divorce.
Not only did he coin the harsh nickname “Skete” for the comedian, but he even encouraged his fans to “scream” at Pete in public, before releasing a disturbing claymation music video that depicted a cartoonlike figure resembling Pete getting kidnapped, decapitated, and buried alive.
Commenting on the resurfaced KUWTK clip with reference to Ye's recent behavior, several fans have now labeled the artist “toxic” and “disrespectful.”
“He is just disrespectful, no class at all. Nobody can talk to anybody like that no matter how rich or high class you are,” one person wrote.
“Oh that honeymoon phase when all your significant others TOXIC traits seems charming,” another wrote.
