Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: The Eerie Adultification of North West

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Hello EICritters… In today’s Everything In Conversation - we’re discussing North West. In August of this year, Dazed released images of their Autumn 2026 issue, which features North, the 13-year-old daughter of reality TV star, brand owner and actress Kim Kardashian and musician Kanye West, as their cover star. When we’ve spoken about North on EIC previously, we uniformly agreed that there was something about her music career that doesn’t sit right with us: a recently turned 13-year-old performing at festivals, travelling to events without her parents, being filmed and photographed by thousands of people at a time and being swarmed by paparazzi. Now her words, opinions and thoughts have been written up in media written for and by adults. Are we right to feel uneasy about this? Is this any different from the careers of the child stars from our youth? And is this a sign of things to come for the future of the children of the Kardashian dynasty?Make sure you’re following us on Instagram for your chance to weigh in and give us your opinions in future episodes. Love you - enjoy the ep! O, R, B x swyfthome.com/pages/eic-podcastLINKS: DAZED - North West: ‘Music is what I wanna do with my life’PARADE - North West's Latest Public Appearance Reignites Debate Over Child FameCall Her Daddy x Kim KFOLLOW US:Instagram TikTok Substack Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I'm Beth. And I'm Ruchera. And this is everything in conversation. Your midweek content sound check ahead of the big show on Friday. Remember, if you want to take part in the conversation, just follow us on Instagram at Everything is ContentPod. That's where we share topics and ask for your thoughts. So this week Anoni is on a break.

She's been working very hard on all of her various projects, plus just being a gorgeous friend and human being in general. But if you are missing Anonis content, don't forget, you can read her brilliant essay on surveillance culture at the South and why we're all making ourselves into content on our EIC substack, where we have all been writing, gorgeous little essays and lists. The link will be in our show notes, or you can just search Everything is Content Pod on Substack. So in August of this year, Days released images of their autumn 2026 issue, which features Northwest,

the 13-year-old daughter of reality TV star brand owner and actress Kim Kardashian and musician Kanye West as their cover star. Issue has been on sale internationally since September the 10th. North, who has been in the public eye ever since she was born in 2013, is the eldest child of Kim and Kanye, and as of 2024, her music career has been officially underway. And in an episode a few months ago, the three of us briefly touched on this after she performed her first ever solo festival set at Lerical Lemonades Summer Smash in Illinois, where she was performing songs from her debut EP, North Forever. We all uniformly agreed that there was something about this that just didn't really sit right,

a recently turned 13-year-old performing at festivals, traveling to events without her parents, being filmed and photographed by thousands of people at a time, swarmed by paparazzi, and now having her words, opinions and thoughts written up in media, written for and by adults. In an appearance on Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy Podcast back in October of 2025,

Kim Kardashian said this about North's creativity. I also nurture her creative side, you know? She's the girl that comes home and just wants to work in the music studio and can be in the studio for like eight hours straight and loves it and just thrives off it. So it also nurtured her creative side and want that for her. The teenager has also received a lot of scrutiny about her clothes and styling choices. For the last year or so, her trademark look has included waist-length blue hair,

all black outfits and piercings, both real and fake. She first shared a photo of dermal piercings on her hands and fingers back in September 2025 when she was 12. Though some of the hand studs she's been pictured with have since been confirmed as simply stick-ons, a few do appear to be real. She shared a story on Instagram earlier this year with her knuckle piercings, quote, removed, leaving marks and small holes on her fingers. This sparked a conversation at the time about the dangers of these kinds of dermal piercings,

which involved using a needle or dermal punch to remove a tiny pocket of skin before a metal anchor is placed beneath the skin and the gem is threaded over the top. piercers do tend to attach a lot of warnings to this kind of body mod as fingers and hands move constantly so there's a risk of catching the piercing causing irritation hands are also usually exposed to a lot of bacteria so can be more prone to infections in the interview of days she's asked what she loves so much about piercings to which she replies they just make you your full self I really want to get my bridge pierce but I'm not allowed I don't know if you read the rest of the interview or just some of it I've been sort of dipping in out, but it's these little remarks. I mean, she's very well spoken and she doesn't really say anything

at all outlandish, but it's these moments where I went, oh, I'm reading an interview with someone who has to have parental permission for these things because she is 13 years old and it kept bringing me out of it and giving me like sort of the soft horrors in a way. I was just like, oh my gosh, you were born in 2013 and adult is interviewing you about, you know, your hopes, dreams, career ambitions, your thoughts about piercings, you are 13. As much as I as a 13-year-old wanted all kinds of piercings, it was that feeling of, imagine if an interviewer for a magazine that's written for grown-ups was asking me these questions, it feels like really surreal?

What an absurd thing to happen in my mind anyway? Yeah, I know. I just found it very weird. I read the whole thing. And a lot of celebrity Q&As, or should I say, musician Q&As, can be quite dead because I think sometimes you can be an incredible musician, but you might not be an amazing interview. So especially when it's a Q&A format and you get the pure answer. Some people can be quite stilted. It can be quite vague answers. I don't love the Q&A format for interviews for that reason. I much prefer

profiles when people are writing around it. With this one, I couldn't work out. Is it quite short, brief answers because she's young and she doesn't really have much to say about her music yet? because she's so young? Or is it because of what I just said? And so the whole time I was reading it, I kept feeling that. I couldn't get away from the fact that maybe it's just because she's really a young girl. And asking her all of these big questions about her music, about her inspirations, about all these things, she's answering in a way that is completely appropriate and normal for her age. I find it very bizarre. I feel very uncomfortable. I don't think it is appropriate that she is being put on a platform at this young and age.

There are all of these discussions around if you have somebody who is very clearly artistic, when are you curtailing their passions, what is appropriate for somebody who is very clearly ambitious, all of that kind of stuff. I think it's very black and white that 12, 13, 14 is way too young. I just think, for me, that's a fact. I do wonder at the wisdom of days doing this cover piece

and obviously child musicians are not new and she is in some senses she's a musical legacy her music is also coming out now which is obviously why they are covering her they're not sort of it's not out of the blue I think the elements are there for this to make sense but something about it does feel off

and Hannah and RDAM has pointed out like the child singers of our generation so Rebecca Black Justin Bieber all of these Disney kids which I think yeah they were also of a similar age when they were making music and I'm very anti that but it was at least least that they were making music for their peers and other young kids. And I think that the

media that was profiling them, it felt a bit more age appropriate in some way. And something about these songs, you know, they're often collaborations with adults. And it feels different. Her audience, she literally just performed, I think a couple of nights ago, Kim Kardashian was in the audience. And they can't tell who's in the audience, but looks like other adults or filming her. it feels like festival goers are all adults i don't know the publications writing about her are four adults and and i just i feel like you must feel a little bit odd and almost like it's eroding something of someone's childhood to be making them or contributing to them being this like household name for having a career something about it and i know that she is dynasty she has grown she's been

famous since she was born there was debates by her name like days after she was announced to the world It's maybe it is slightly different than other child stars, but it almost feels worse in some ways. Like you really had a choice here, parents, and you chose the spotlight in this very vulnerable way. I just personally do think it's all a bit young and it's all a bit odd. I think you make a really solid point about audience. I hadn't really considered that element of it, but I think that is a big part of why it's so uncomfortable. It's very clearly the fact that she is a cover star for a very adult fashion, cultural, like Geisty magazine that is designed for not people of her age demographic at all. I do think with

her there is this kind of like fetishization of the fact that she is a relic of these two people who are behemoths who came together for this very, in hindsight, one of the biggest pop culture relationships of our lifetime. I think Vulture wrote a piece when they broke up about their divorce and just the times of Kim Yeh. And I think, something about that means that adults really fetishize her in particular about that time and also a child of Kanye and because Kanye or Yeh, sorry, is experiencing all of this kind of rightly so backlash and also this very confusing time of people trying to still have him come back because they're massive fans of his music and they want him to come back but are facing an understandable

pushback because of the wild amount of incidences that have happened in the last five years and the hugely anti-Semitic things he said. I wonder if there's a case for people really wanting some slice of him and his talent to be present in her, even if she's far too young for that to be appropriate. So this is a vessel to maybe still experience that level of fandom of him through virtue of her. In a way, I can understand that if I take a step back, because some of his music has been really, really affecting and moving for me personally. And I really, some albums back when I used to listen to them would, I just, I don't know, some songs could really have brought me to tears and some could really move me and some can really flaw me. So I can understand that level of

this was one of the greatest artists of our time. Him having a daughter who could be of that level is just unimaginable. But it's so fucking weird. She's not even 16. She is so young, she feels so young, I think there needs to be more guardrails and there needs to be a level of appropriateness with adults who are consuming her music and engaging with this level of platforming of her. It's fucking weird. It's weird to stand a child it is if you're an adult. Yeah, I think that's it. It's sort of encouraging people to have these parasocial relationships, which, who would know better than Kim Kardashian, how frightening these things can be and how much, you know, hate can be involved in powering a public facing career. And already, if you

If anything comes up on your view page or any video clips of Northwest performing, there's the same joke made by adults underneath. And it is she's got her father's confidence and her mother's talent, e.g. She's very confident, but she's not. She's sort of a girl with no talent. And it's adults gleefully repeating this kind of trite joke about a child. There was no other way that this was going to go. It's stupid joke. It's horrible. It's mean-spirited. That is the internet. That is modern fandom. People will treat her as fair. because she is very rich, but also she is protected and insulated by these parents who

themselves have been, I've played the game fantastic, but both of them have been caricatured by the press. Kanye West has been mocked and its mental illness has been the butt of the joke. I think he is also him being a black man. He has been absolutely for his whole career, even when he was an industry darling, he has been mocked and taken less seriously and really harmed. And I do think many of these things haven't changed. And I think North West was already at risk of being adultified because she is mixed race, because she is so in the public eye, I'm already seeing that people, people are making comments

on her appearance. I mean, I think perfectly, I think she dresses in a way that I would have dressed had I had the access. I was like nine years old walking around Camden Market and cyberdog, dress like a little goth hot dog. Like it's, you know, those things, I think, you know, I was really encouraged actually. None of the messages we got were people scandalized by how she appears by her blue hair, her makeup, her self-expression. And I think it's really interesting. You know, she's free in her family to deviate from the Kardashian aesthetic if such a thing exists.

That, I think, no problem. I have a slight problem that I'm seeing her being paparazzied outside of events, swarmed at festivals and the fact that she is having this career, I think even for the super rich, childhood is a temporary state, like you never ever get to repeat it. And literally, you know, we've had generations of child stars and nepo babies. Basically, as long as we've had modern fame, say, here's a cautionary tale, this messed me up, like Drew Barrymore, River Phoenix, even someone like Judy Garland, like the OG Nepo Babies child stars, there's so many tragic cases and so many like near misses. Having a parent in the industry who presumably is so aware of

horrors of celebrity, co-sign you as a 12, 13-year-old being photographed densely, traveling alone, put in front of crowds of adults, rooms with adults. It just seems quite frightening. Like, why choose that when you could, in fact, she could have the most amazing musical training? She could have a childhood alongside that. And then when she's at her absolute peak, you know, she doesn't have to be a Wundekind. Maybe she is as fantastically talented as her dad or more so, but it just feels like a silly thing to try and prove. We had a message from Georgia who said, so many thoughts and opinions, one of them being that I should not have so many thoughts and opinions about a 13-year-old. The Kardashians exist as pieces of content in themselves, so it's unsurprising that North has been allowed to grow up so quickly.

The content machine must keep turning. I really think Kim will mould Chicago's public persona in more of her own image, brackets, sweet, studious and entrepreneur, as she gets older, because North has followed in Kanye's footsteps and image. Will a debate over the appropriateness of North's career be a plot point source of tension between the sisters and future series of the show? Doubt it. Will North get her own spin-off show? Maybe.

When North has control of her own social media accounts, will she be spilling messy secrets about how the dynasty is run? Hopefully, but her mother probably made her sign an NDA at birth. I know that last one was obviously a joke, but sometimes when I see MJ Corey, aka the Kardashian Colloquium, explore just how intentional and rigorous the Kardashian machine is, sometimes it really feels like

it's one of the only conspiracy theories where you can't really be sure where the line is, because I'm sure this point has been made before, but the Kardashians are business ventures, the biggest business venture they have, their pensions are their kids, and the amount of attention that their kids are already getting through the show, through social media, the fact that I know all of their kids' names. This is so weird. Why do I know their children's names for fuck sake? I shouldn't know all of them and I do. That's something. That's not nothing. I feel like there are future prospects there. And also, as we mentioned last week with Earl Meets World, if you are surrounded by people who are creators who are already media moguls doing all of this stuff, it's so unlikely

that you're going to break away from it. All it means is that from a child you are in front of screens, you are performing constantly. It just means that I think it's a pressure cooker into condensing the time that you are most likely going to follow through. I think we probably will see more of the children enter into this, but I really hope it's not as young. I think it does, even as they have all the access in the world, all the money in the world, it sort of does diminish your options later on. And it does. We said, this about children on social media before is it's a legacy and it is a blueprint and it's your kind of like digital footprint that you can't erase and just feels like all of these things which

probably very fun in private this may be an era for her that lasts forever in terms of fashion but for very few of us that's true when we're 13 she has this you know amazing archival wardrobe she has this access why does that need to be something that I a member of the general public and a fairly disinterested one but you know in a fairly protective one of women and girls why would I see that why would that be something that I'm participating in? I find it all just a little bit like it could have all taken place behind closed doors and no one would have lost anything apart from she would have not been able to kickstart a career as a child. And I just think that's not actually a loss. She's got the rest of her to have these doors open for her, to have these stages. I mean,

we got a message from Anand who said, parenting is hard. I imagine celebrity parenting is really hard. She's not the first teenager with piercings and wild hair, etc., just the latest in a long line. A bigger worry is all the eyes on such a young woman. Society is scary, predatory right now. And it's like, actually, yet she's a child, in fact. Like, she will be, she's not even reached that age of young woman. She is a child. All that's happened is they've invited other eyes and other opinions.

And whether she's allowed to look at the comments or not, I mean, she has a shared profile on TikTok with Kim. I think they've got about 21 million followers. the comments are on, the ability to break through. I mean, you would hope that she doesn't see any of this and is just in a bubble. But still, like, I'm sure even that bubble must be harmful to an extent. And I agree with what, Nan says that it's probably very hard to say to your child, okay, I'm world famous, but we have to keep you, you have to do this, and you don't get to express yourself and you're not allowed to be part of this world.

But at a certain point, it feels like that is the right option. Like it's going to, it would sort of mess me up if I was able to, basically, just because I said I want this, people, you know, book a festival because of my name. And it's not to say that I don't think she has a potential of huge talent. I don't know that. But it's a shortcut. And I think that is also quite warping. I think that is also a fairly twisted gateway in to celebrity as a child. I just can't wrap the head around it. Comparing her to other children and famous people in the kind of, I guess, rough age demographic has been. quite helpful. Amina said, I imagine her normal would never be another teenager's normal,

simply because of the family she's born into. But I feel like she's being exploited at every opportunity. When you consider Blue Ivy as a similar age, I think there's a marked difference at how she is being managed over how Northwest is. I think Days scored an own goal with that cover and interview is dreadful. And I appreciate that in some ways you cannot compare children. And I did listen to that Kim Kardashian, call her daddy interview, and I have watched some of the amazing clips of Northwest dragging her mom as she's getting dressed for the Met in front of the designers who make her dresses, which is very, very funny, including the fact that she said that a real pearl necklace her mom was wearing to the Met looked like dollar store pearls.

I say that to say, it's very visible how driven Northwest is and how outspoken, how self-assured, how confident, how forthright she is. So I can imagine it is really tricky, especially being the mother to a child who knows their own mind, who knows what they want to do, who doesn't feel vulnerable if she's saying, I know what I have, I have this power, this passion, I know what I need to do and you're clipping my wings. That must be difficult, especially when you have the access to give your child the dreams that she says that she is so confidently in desperation of pursuing. with the father that she has a bona fide musician. But, but, but, but ultimately it is exploitation. I do think dazed putting her on the cover, they know it's provocative. They know that it gets the

people going, not to quote, but it does. And they're using her image to spark conversation and to sell issues. They know it's provocative to put a child in there. They also know what Northwest, the symbol, is to people. I can't get away from the fact that it does feel really exploitative. Yeah, and I just said that no one in this situation could plead ignorance to that. And it's like I said before, like childhood does not last very long. She's already, you know, that 13 year and your adolescence, you've got that few more years until you're an adult. You can and will make all the decisions, you know, good and bad that you want. I find it, I think it's very precious childhood. And maybe I'm being too hard-headed and maybe with all the Kardashian slash West resources, you know, maybe maybe. she has got access to all the things that we slash childhood experts can agree that children need to have, you know, a really fulfilling childhood, e.g. safety and nurturing and play and routine, but also consequences and boundaries and like love and imagination and just like fundamental safety and protection from the adult world. I think I'm just seeing so much of the adult world

surrounding her in these pictures. And it's so much not about what she is dressing like or looking like or the music that she wants to make because, you know, God knows, I was writing some pretty tortured poetry or whatever and I felt this way but it wasn't published no one put it in front of adult audiences to you know seriously engage with I think for children to have careers in general you put them in it's a massive adjustment of what a childhood should be and we we know this from stars like sadly um hayden panettiere who said that it was pills that made her workload manageable and bearable age 16 and obviously it was those pills that ushered her towards a more serious addiction we know that it's very taxing for a child to work and I'm not such

Justin that Kim Collarsher, she would overwork her child. I think at the moment it's probably just like heaps of fun and she can pick it up and put it down at will. But I don't necessarily think that children always know when to hang something up. I think that you learn that. And I think in the matter of like playing out too long or whatever it is staying on the computer watching The Sims, there's no ceiling. You'd be like, I can do this. But I think with a career and doing something which is so like otherworldly amazing, I don't think a child would put that down. I think she will work. I think she is, as Kim Kardashian describes, able to be in the studio for eight hours, able to do this. Limpless energy. And I think it's a really easy way to exchange your childhood

for something which you have the rest of your life to do. And we got a message from a non that said, her answers, e.g. in the day's piece, make me realize she really is just a kid. She should be socializing with other 13-year-olds, not sycophantic adults in the fashion industry. And that's another thing. It's sort of like, how do you behave around Northwest? What is that, dynamic there. Sort of very famous, coming into fame in her own right, daughter of two absolute powerhouses in the entertainment industry. That is a dynamic. I don't even want to see how people are engaging with her because that is very bizarre. 13 year old with an adult, but the 13 year old has this imbued power. Oh, I don't know. A whole thing said at the top is giving me the horrors.

I think it's really interesting that people have made the point that we grew up in an era of quite a child artist, musicians, Rebecca Black, her name's been brought up, Justin Bieber. It does make me think, though, that Rebecca Black's big story is that she faced such extreme trauma from the experience she had of releasing Friday to the point that, you know, it really took a toll on her life and she was not in the public eye for most of her life following that, and it was one of the worst experiences that she recounts from her life to date. And then with Justin Bieber, there has been so much speculation which I will not obviously go into about his mental health, especially in the last few years with certain imagery of how he's looking. But one thing that I do remember is how

he was quite sexualized by women for being this young boy with his sweepy hair. Women who were like in their 20s, 30s remembering saying that he would be a cute boyfriend, like all these kind of things, just really sexualizing him in a way that was very uncomfortable in a way that Harry Stiles and lots of One Direction have been as well. I don't think these people have come out unscathed from being child singers. The best case scenario a la Justin Bieber doesn't also seem like a great scenario to be in. There might be more guardrails because of the financial situation and the power that her family have, but I wonder how much protection that can do just looking at the scenario as a whole. I hope it all basically just works out that she picks this up,

like, Alby puts it down, has a cushy, lovely life. I think the comparisons between other child stars are interesting, but as we both say, like, she is already rich. She is not the breadwinner for her family. It's not a, um, Jeanette McCurdy situation. It is very much, she doesn't have to work hard to be famous. She doesn't have to work hard to make money. She was famous the minute she was born. And, I mean, she's not even the first magazine cover that she's had. It's, it sort of just feels like they've been funneling her this way. She has a choice, but the greatest danger, I think, is loss of childhood and a chance to just be a kid, her life is already going to be completely bizarre, completely strange. This just feels like leaning into the strangeness rather than away from it.

There's a lot of things that I'll criticise Kim Kardashian for, but typically her parenting hasn't been one of them. But in this case, I do. I think it feels a little bit too soon. But obviously, I have every hope that it will maybe just be a fad and she will get to be as normal. as a 14-year-old can be 15, 16, 17, 18 before. She really is in the adult world because, you know, when you're there, you really can't unring that bell. And I just think it would be a shame for her to grow up too fast. It's already a pretty frightening world for, I think, the offspring of very famous women,

especially if they are girls. That's all I'll say. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your opinions and takes on this topic. We loved hearing what you thought about this. So keep sending in more thoughts. We'll see you, as always, on Friday. Bye