Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet: Why We Need to Unpack the ...

Kylie and Timmy have, like most other celebrities, been distilled into their distinct types — categorised into comprehensive groups where they are expected to remain. In a word, they have become brands. Now that the two contradictory categories have met and started dating, the internet has gone into freak out mode. This isn't the first time that we've panicked over two seemingly incongruous celeb brands dating — just take “good girl” Taylor Swift's short-lived romance with the perpetually greasy, chain-smoking endless fountain of controversy that is The 1975 frontman Matty Healy.

In a culture obsessed with brands, it seems that people are expected to adhere to their brand when dating.

Let's dig a little deeper: what are their individual ‘brands?’ Well, Timmy is an indie film darling. We imagine that he's the kind of guy you might spy reading Foucault, wearing linen trousers and a carrying an understated bookshop tote bag. He's dishevelled, but in an intellectual way.

Then we have Kylie, the glossy reality star with a beauty empire. She is fast fashion and TikTok trends and Instagram filters and fake tan personified — or so we imagine her.

The subtext here is that she is too dumb, too simple for the lofty likes of Timothée.

Of course, there are several very big problems here: firstly, we don't know that Timmy is smart and we don't know that Kylie is dumb. However, in an era when our parasocial relationships with celebrities seem to be stronger (and often weirder) than ever, we seem to have convinced ourselves that we do.

In fact, many people have taken to social media to remind us all that, actually, Timmy might not be the cultured, bookish Frenchman we all take him for. There is even a meme going around in which people post videos of the actor next to the caption “Kylie doesn't offer Timothée anything on an intellectual level" showing him being well… a total goofball. It is a stark reminder: just because he has starred in several introverted, thoughtful films, it doesn't necessarily mean thoughtful and deep are his only personality traits.

And even if our perceptions of the pair are, on some level, correct (which, of course, they could be), it's extremely odd to suggest that ‘smart indie boys’ should only be dating women who present themselves as ‘smart indie girls’.

There's no way around it — the critiques of Kylie as a quote-unquote suitable partner for Timothée are, at their core, merely examples of the sexist attitudes that have long been ingrained and normalised in our culture.