Does Being Rich Make You Thin? Khloé Kardashian Can’t Understand Fans’ Complaints About Exercise

On Sunday, Khloé Kardashian let her fans know that she’s tired of their “complaining,” accusing them of making excuses for not exercising. The 32-year-old is known for broadcasting her daily workouts on Snapchat, but apparently some of her fans are having trouble relating to and replicating the exercises that Khloé does, owing to her use of state-of-the-art equipment and a personal trainer.

“Why the f*** are you still complaining and saying, ‘If I had a trainer, if I had a gym?’ Well, I don’t have a gym. We’re doing everything outside,” Khloé said in a series of Snapchat videos.

“I’m showing you guys how to do the workouts so you don’t need a trainer. I’m using everything that I’m sure you guys have around the house,” she said through a squeaky-voiced bunny filter. “Or improvise! What the f***? If only complaining burned calories, you guys would be some healthy motherf***ers. But to all the ones who appreciate my Snaps, I love you and God bless.”

Khloé’s Snapchat offers comprehensive examples of functional fitness, using weighted bags, ropes, and body weight in circuit training exercises that she performs outside on a basketball court with her trainer, friends, and family.

Some of Khloé’s fans came to her defense upon hearing her message. One said on Instagram: “In regards to your Snaps, you show the public you work out with very little. I loved your message via Snap telling people straight. … Please don’t stop, I’m recovering from spinal surgery and I’m just starting physiotherapy. You inspire me and give me hope that one day I’ll be able to work out like you. I follow and support. Keep it up, girl, you’re so fierce.” Another commented, “You want to look like Khloe, work out like Khloe.”

But for some, it’s not that simple. Khloé’s workouts aren’t relatable to many of her fans who aren’t able to mentally move past a major divide in privilege.

“When we think about wealth, we tend to think about money and other material resources. We forget about both time and what we might call mental energy,” Beth C. Weitzman, professor of health and public policy at New York University, tells Yahoo Beauty. “In prior work, people indicate that one of the reasons they eat fast food is because it is fast. Work hours and commute time take a toll on the less affluent. Household demands --— whether housecleaning or childcare — are greater for those with less wealth.”

So can Khloé ever reach all her fans? “Reducing the true cost of diet and exercise would require greater attention to the ‘workloads’ of the less affluent,” says Weitzman. “They have neither the time nor energy to shop, cook, exercise, etc!”

So when Khloé presents her fans with free diet and exercise tips, it’s no wonder they have trouble applying her advice to their lives. It takes more than paying for a gym or having access to the equipment to get in shape — it also takes time and energy. If Khloé’s fans lack either, that monthly membership bill is going to be wasted, and their efforts will be thwarted.

The connection between wealth and exercise is deep-rooted and plays a role in why, generally, Westerners equate thinness with beauty. “[In Western cultures,] only rich people can afford to be thin. In cultures where only rich people can afford to be fat, on the other hand, corpulence has been considered more comely,” the New York Times reports. Likewise, a 2016 survey found that 84 percent of U.S. men with higher incomes said that it was “essential” that their partner be slender, versus just 12 percent of lower-income men.

These preferences translate into exercise habits, too. According to a Gallup survey, as of 2009 just 46.6 percent of Americans earning less than $36,000 per year exercised at least three days a week, compared with 54.3 percent of Americans earning more than $80,000 per year.

And that percentage only goes up as income levels rise. Author Thomas C. Corley spent five years studying rich people, whom he defines as having an annual income of $160,000 or more and a liquid net worth of $3.2 million or more. “Seventy-six percent of the rich aerobically exercise 30 minutes or more every day,” Corley reports in his 2016 book, Change Your Habits, Change Your Life.

Similar trends apply to diet. “The cruel fact is that [less] than 100 years ago, being poor meant you were painfully thin. Now, it means you are dangerously fat,” the Huffington Post reports. “By an extraordinary twist of economics, the fresh, local produce once available cheaply at the back-road farm stand has become the preserve of the elites, available in gourmet-food shops at inflated prices. In a bizarre reversal, now it is the wealthy who are rail-thin.”

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Related: Khloé Kardashian Says Promoting Healthy Body Image Is Important to Her Family