What our reaction to Kim Kardashian says about us as people - and feminists

In January, the Philosophical Society at Trinity College Dublin asked me to take part in a debate entitled “This house would use its sexuality to get ahead”.

I was opposing the motion.

My argument was that we live in a world that is constantly sexualising women anyway, where sex is used to sell everything from shampoo to crisps, and that by engaging with that and attempting to use their sexuality as currency to further their careers, women might run the risk of reinforcing the patriarchal idea that a woman’s integral worth is inextricably tied up with her physical attractiveness.