Kris Jenner: The Empress of Power

Kris’s love of cooking aligns with her caretaker nature. “I wrote it for my kids so that they know our favorite family recipes and for nostalgia sake. They call me constantly anyway to ask about recipes, so I thought I would write this family cookbook. Right now, I love to grill. Today I went to Williams-Sonoma and got some vegetable grillers for the barbecue. I love to throw a bunch of asparagus on the grill with salmon and then make a big salad,” she says. At the time of the interview, she was in the middle of a three-day juice cleanse that she took on with her assistant. “I live by the 80-20 rule: 80 percent of the time you eat really healthy and 20 percent you treat yourself. But every once in a while it’s good to cleanse,” she says.
Kris is a consummate professional in the business world—that is plain. Her mother was a store-owner at a time when that was uncommon. Her first husband, Robert, was a formidable attorney, and her second husband, Bruce Jenner, an Olympic medalist. What better influencers to teach strength and business acumen? These lessons seeped into her—by “osmosis,” she says—and surface when needed. “I follow my intuition,” she says. “I’ve spent a lot of time around really powerful people who happened to be successful, and they were very positive influences in my life— great mentors.” She adds, “Robert Kardashian taught me so much about business and dealing with people—all these years later they are some of my greatest tools. I’m so thankful for those lessons.”

But the sweeping popularity that the family enjoys comes with obvious pitfalls. Kris is a realist and admits that she and her family knew what they signed on for when they opened their lives up for the world to gawk at. But she finds fabricated stories about her and her family to be cruel. “I worry about my grandchildren because the Internet can be brutal,” she says. “What makes someone so evil and angry that they would say the cruelest things about another human being? I raised my kids kind of old-fashioned—if you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say it at all. I teach love, acceptance, and tolerance,” she explains. “People hide behind ‘freedom of speech.’ That’s what you are going to hide behind?” She continues: “I sometimes think that this generation is lacking in decency,” adding that “I’m strong enough and have a pretty thick skin, but when people go after my kids, I just hit block-delete, block-delete. It’s my mantra.”

Because she doesn’t publicize her philanthropic efforts she is frustrated that people assume she doesn’t have a benevolent nature. “I taught my kids to give back. Robert Kardashian would tell us to give back to the community and ‘do good things’ with our extra time—but don’t talk about it,” she reveals. “But in this world, if you don’t talk about your philanthropy, people don’t think you do it,” she protests. “For instance, I recently posted [a photo on Instagram of ] a basket of skincare products that I was given by Philosophy, and I thanked them for the gorgeous gift. Soon after comments were posted, saying, ‘You need to give back!’ Unless you shout it from the rooftops, people don’t know your charity work or philanthropy. I don’t think anyone should pass judgment,“ she says.