So Kylie Jenner is Forbes’ youngest self-made billionaire. Not to be confused with when she was announced to be Forbes’ youngest self-made billionaire soon. She made that extra 100k and now it’s official.
Naturally there is an overwhelming wave of shade flowing in directed at Kylie and Forbes for attributing the title ‘self-made’ to someone who is part of the Kardashian Klan. Indisputably, Kylie Jenner’s current success is off the back of her family’s fame and fortune, and this doesn’t match what most of us consider ‘self-made’.
Even the dictionary is throwing shade.
Haven't we gone over this?
Self-made: Having succeeded in life unaided.https://t.co/g0ZHDSkVfu https://t.co/3O48zKsInN
— Dictionary.com (@Dictionarycom) March 5, 2019
But for Forbes, Kylie Jenner does qualify for the self-made category.
Forbes clarifies that for their calculations, they define the term as,
“Someone who built a company or established a fortune on her own, rather than inheriting some or all of it. As long as the list member didn’t inherit a business or money, she is labeled self-made.”
So technically speaking, Kylie Jenner is self-made in the sense that the money being considered is from her own company, and not from her inheritance (which she also has as a fun bonus!).
Obviously the technicality does not reflect the real essence of what self-made means, and Forbes claims to address this by using a score system on a scale of 1 to 10 to clarify how self-made any individual on their rich list actually is.
“Based on that scale, someone who inherited everything scores a 1,” Forbes says, “while someone who not only grew up poor but also experienced substantial hardships – like Oprah Winfrey – scores a 10. Kylie Jenner, who comes from a wealthy family and who has leveraged her fame to her advantage, ranks a 7.”
But when you go to Kylie Jenner’s Forbes profile, she scores a self-made score of 7. So however the calculation system works, it definitely doesn’t reflect the reality of hardship we associate with being self-made.
Kylie might be ‘self-made’ in strict business terms, but in reality, she’s a pile of money sitting on a pile of money that allows her to grow another pile of money.