Damage Control

Spot the Hidden Meaning in Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s Christmas Photo

West tweeted a family photo three days after it was taken amid swelling divorce rumors.

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Kanye West has tweeted a photo of his family, complete with Kim Kardashian West and their children, North and Saint. The photo arrived online three days after it was taken at Kris Jenner’s Christmas Eve party on Saturday. This is the same party that prolonged those pesky Kim/Kanye divorce rumors, because Kardashian West chose not to wear a wedding ring to the event, while West was notably absent from the family’s social output that evening. (See the Page Six investigation for all the details, but in short: that evening, Kardashian West made a rare appearance since being robbed in Paris on her sister Khloé Kardashian’s Snapchats, where her missing ring was glaringly obvious.)

In this moment of shared turmoil for the couple (her robbery, his hospitalization), they’ve both used infrequent appearances to do their own rumor toppling. This Christmas photo could be another attempt to signal that all is well in house West.

Kardashian West has gradually begun to emerge from her social-media blackout. She hasn’t spoken publicly or posted on her own accounts since the robbery on October 3, but she has attended Kanye’s concerts, gone on an ice-cream run with her friend Jonathan Cheban, and gone out to dinner with her husband. Each of these events was captured by paparazzi, and each was also performed in a consciously public manner (the various spots Kardashian West was photographed are hotbeds of pap activity).

Kanye made a splashy appearance at Trump Tower himself—but besides that, he’s kept a low profile lately, only popping up at his friend’s art show and around Los Angeles movie theaters with ever-evolving hair color. His social output, too, has remained sparse and reactionary. Since his hospitalization, he’s only used Twitter to comment on his Trump visit.

The call-and-response nature of West’s twitter style—i.e., the media calls, and he responds—suggests that the family photo can be read as a public-relations move, and a very sweet-looking one at that. Here’s Kanye swatting down divorce rumors, one happy-family picture at a time.