If you had to sum up the year in beauty, you might talk about celebrities and influencers, who came out with a lot of brands, or makeup having a comeback. Glossier’s growing pains would be another candidate for the story of the year, or maybe the staying power of fragrance, the pandemic’s unlikely winner.

But really, 2022 was yet another year where Kim Kardashian dominated the beauty conversation — though not because she debuted her long-anticipated skin care line.

In June, Kardashian re-launched her beauty brand with SKKN By Kim. The overall aesthetic — varying shades of nude and gray, minimal and resembling stone or concrete, much like Kardashian’s house — was very on brand. The decision to start with skin care, less so. Kardashian is widely known for her makeup, and arguably, responsible for the mainstreaming of contouring as a beauty trend.

The hope was that Kardashian could recreate the success of Skims, her multi-billion dollar lifestyle brand that sells shapewear, bras, underwear, swimwear and more. Critical to Skims’ winning formula was that the product was authentic to Kardashian, famous for curves that weren’t necessarily embraced by fashion. She built an empire rooted in body inclusivity and positivity, with marketing and campaigns that mirror this ethos.

SKKN by Kim’s $43 cleanser and $95 oil drops and night oil fit that model in some ways; they are all part of Kardashian’s own rigorous nine-step routine. Candid about her vanity, she told me in a previous interview for The New York Times that she would eat feces every day if it would make her look younger.

It’s too soon to say how it’s selling, but the response to SKKN by Kim was as muted as its packaging. The skin care wasn’t perceived as revolutionary, and for the most part it wasn’t. It felt similar to any other prestige skin care with minimalist branding designed for millennials.

Kardashian garnered far more attention this year from just about everything else she did. In 2022, she shed her husband, Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), her boyfriend, Pete Davidson, and then those curves.

The 42-year-old, who made her shapely derriere her trademark (her glossy backside on the cover of Paper Magazine’s #BreaktheInternet issue in 2014 did just that), has embraced her new slimmer frame like a trophy, first by shrinking herself to squeeze into a dress belonging to Marilyn Monroe at the Met Gala and even going so far as to post body scans boasting Olympic athlete levels of body fat over the summer.

In the mid-aughts, a celebrity’s shrinking physique and admission of an extreme diet might have elicited a mix of praise, admiration, condemnation and concern. Their meal plan and a detailed list of what they do and do not eat in a day would probably also sparked new diet trends. Now, not so much.

Priorities are shifting, especially among Gen-Z, a group that increasingly values self-acceptance, self-expression, justice, authenticity and diversity in every way, from race to body types. This group is less preoccupied with perfection or attaining unrealistic body fat percentages; they crave Selena Gomez’s humanity, whether it’s her real stomach on TikTok or opening up about mental health struggles, and Lizzo’s unabashed confidence.

Despite Kardashian’s willingness to share her weight, she wasn’t opening up the way younger consumers want. Openness and authenticity, whether real or not, is the key to selling products. Kardashian is getting more attention than ever, but the fixation on weight loss and achieving a perfect body feels like a throwback. Her comment in the Times were perhaps a stab at Gomez-style authenticity, but it was overshadowed by everything else she said and did this year.

MJ Corey, a psychotherapist and the founder of “Kardashian Kolloquium,” an Instagram account that analyses the impact the Kardashian family has on culture, likened Kardashian to a cyborg.

“She’s codifying herself like a computer, [showing us] she’s at her optimal peak running performance, operationally,” Corey said of Kardashian’s uncanny ability to create a “perfect, organic-matter-shaped-into-a-human-being” type image and expertly project it onto the hundreds of millions of people who follow her online.

It’s a way of operating online that’s better suited to Instagram than TikTok, which is where much of the beauty conversation is now happening and where trends are born. Over the summer, when Instagram prioritised video content in an attempt to be more like TikTok, Kardashian and sister Kylie Jenner reposted a photo that said “Make Instagram Instagram again.”

“Content surrounding Kim’s body will always land, even if it’s not received well,” Corey said. “It will always trend.”

That may be true, it just might not always sell skin care products.