Fuck the Patriarchy, on All Fours

DECEMBER 29, 2024

“Everyone thinks doggy style is so vulnerable…but it’s actually the most stable position. Like a table. It’s hard to be knocked down when you’re on all fours.”  All Fours, Miranda July

Before even processing the lyrics were “Santa Baby,” I recognized Kim Kardashian crawling across the detritus of some long-stay motel room or apartment on all fours as a fever dream iteration of the narrator in room 321 from All Fours, the critically acclaimed novel by writer and filmmaker Miranda July. A spectacular scene-setter, July sparked a literary tsunami that fueled Sauvignon Blanc-soaked debates in book clubs everywhere. Do we like the narrator? Does it matter if we like her? Can we relate to her? She’s at a pivotal point in life—menopause looms. Doesn’t she represent all of us? Am I right? I’m right! No juror is more fervent than a woman of a certain age at a book club.

At first glance, Miranda July’s All Fours and Kim Kardashian’s video performance might seem worlds apart, but each one challenges and reflects on our ongoing, fraught engagement with the patriarchy. While their approaches couldn’t be more different—one speculative and introspective, the other glossy and performative— both works underscore the complicated terrain of feminist expression in contemporary culture.

July, known for her offbeat storytelling, explores vulnerability, autonomy, and sexual agency in All Fours. With a nameless narrator orbited by husband, child, friends and an artistic profession, the book mirrors the complexities of feminist identity and choice: fractured, layered, and resistant to easy categorization. The novel’s most vivid scenes unfold in a motel room the narrator transforms into her personal woman-cave: vibrant fabrics, lush textures, perfectly placed bathroom tiles. Fetishizing the idea of another life, she constructs her dream space as an escape from her responsibilities as a wife and mother. Isn’t that what we all long for? The freedom not only to fetishize the other, but to make it our reality?

Enter Kim K. Big blonde hair, perfect breasts and every inch of her pulled and plumped—she’s a woman who designed herself to be ogled. But what is she doing in these strange rooms? Rooms brimming with what one can only imagine is a certain man’s fantasy made real: stiletto-clad women playing Twister, cheerleaders, Christmas dwarves—elves? Really? Is that still a thing? A master of self-branding, Kim reclaims the traditional male gaze by performing femininity on her own terms. She is her own fetish, whether other women like her or not. What could be just-yet-another-breathy rendition of “Santa Baby” instead capitalizes on her public persona—one often criticized for its hypersexuality—and turns it into a sarcastic, slow wink at capitalism. Embodying what July calls “the most stable position” is perhaps exactly why Kim commands center stage, on all fours, crawling, always moving forward, nary a glance at the crude temptation around her. 

July’s nameless narrator might embody every perimenopausal 40-something woman’s yearning for “otherness,” but isn’t Kim’s unapologetic comfort in her own skin—sexuality and all—also what we truly aspire to? She doesn’t give a fuck and beats the patriarchy at its own game: simultaneously embracing and eschewing her objectification. The All Fours narrator longs for a room of her own (hat tip, Virginia Woolf), but she quickly realizes she wants more: to be seen, to be desired. Eroticism, it seems, doesn’t fully thrive in solitude, no matter how often she masturbates. The narrator is perhaps most aroused when her younger companion changes her tampon; she is most turned on by effectively employing a man to participate in a symbol of womanhood. 

Kardashian delivers an unabashed I-want-you-to-want-to-fuck-me visual in a hard to watch celebration of agency and self-posession. She blurs the line between objectification and empowerment, but she is entirely in charge. She’s crawling across that dirty floor in her SKIMS, reminding us that she turned what women and men want into a multi-billion dollar business, daring us not to see that she has the power. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and her name is Kim.

With her book. July offers a gift we can never fully unwrap  - something that keeps us yearning - while Kardashian presents a truth we’d rather ignore. We don’t want this particular woman to fuck the patriarchy; we want her demure, less sexual—more of this, less of that, a better example for our children, please. Exactly what the system has always dictated to women. By centering herself in this hyper-capitalist fantasy, Kardashian shifts the patriarchal ideals of control and success as she, quite literally, moves through them. In contrast, July’s narrator stages small rebellions, only to find herself in new, equally challenging paradigms as long as other human beings are involved. 

The golden light awareness at the end of All Fours comes when July’s narrator accepts who she is entirely on her own, “...imperfect, ungendered, game, unashamed,” satisfied and energized by a new sense of identity. Kim’s video ends as Santa’s baby approaches his chair, looking directly at the man behind the camera when she decides to come up from all fours.

Storytellers both, I'll be hoping for sequels next year.