Kylie Jenner has officially been named the youngest self-made billionaire. Now, I think most of us could've predicted this in our sleep about the Kylie Cosmetics owner.
Kylie responded to the news with excitement to Forbes stating, "I didn't expect anything. I did not foresee the future," says Jenner. "But the recognition feels really good. That's a nice pat on the back." Jenner also said, "It's the power of social media," Jenner says. "I had such a strong reach before I was able to start anything."
The controversy over this news is that many don't consider her or any of her family members as self-made anything, let alone a self-made billionaire. We can't forget Jenner's sister, Kim Kardashian's, sex tape that brought her to the spotlight in 2007 with ex-boyfriend and singer Ray J.
Ever since then the Kardashian name and anyone affiliated, such as their Jenner family members, have received a large amount of fame and fans.
Dictionary.com even weighed in on the news by Tweeting, "Haven't we gone over this? Self-made: Having succeeded in life unaided".
We can definitely see that Dictionary.com doesn't think that Kylie is a self-made billionaire, but that doesn't take away from the fact that she is indeed a billionaire. She had a vision of her cosmetics line, and she made it into a billion-dollar business. She definitely deserves credit for that, but the title 'self-made' is definitely a stretch.
Now the term 'self-made' can even be a debatable topic because everyone receives some sort of aid or guidance in their lives. They may have not been born into a wealthy family like Kylie, but even the smallest amount of advice or support is a form of aid. This is a topic that would take more than an article to discuss.
The reality is that if Kylie Jenner was a regular person like me or you, with little to no money to start a business, she would not have had the same path to success as she did. She even admitted that she already had a huge following from social media, which I think is safe to say had a large part to do with her sister Kim and being on Keeping Up With the Kardashians. With that being said, she has clearly had a lot of advantages in her life that most don't start out with as easily as she did.
She definitely put in some undeniable hard work to make Kylie Cosmetics successful, but she is simply not 'self-made'.