The Sunday Times (London) October 1, 2017 Sunday Don't dismiss the Kardashians as selfie-obsessed celebs. This loyal, honest brood make terrific role models by: India Knight It's the 10th anniversary of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which I love. My mother and sisters don't love it, annoyingly, as my affection is largely due to the show's depictions ofsister relationships and motherdaughter dynamics. I put it on for mymother a few months ago and said: "Come on. Just 10 minutes. Obviously we're not zillionaire Californian reality stars with enormous bottoms, but there will be things that resonate." But after about 30 seconds she reeled back, horrified, and firmly said: "India, no!" She'd been profoundly repulsed by the bottoms, or vulgarity, or somesuch. The thing is, the series works at many levels, only one of which is bottoms and bling. I'm not especially interested in what it says about selfies or 21st-century fame, though I am wholly in favour of women making gigantic amounts of money for themselves and their families, including by monetising their own behinds or lipsticks or weight loss. Kris, Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, Kendall and Kylie are all astute, clever women. What keeps me watching is the closeness of the family. I love how into each other the sisters are. They enjoy each other's company hugely, even when they're bickering. The show is like a bonkers, dysfunctional Little Women. That level of sibling love and intimacy is absent from TV dramas, soap operas or documentaries, as are women supporting each other without an iota of envy or resentment. You don't see people being passionately devoted to their mums unless they're fictional East End gangsters, or being completely serene and loving as various bits of their families splinter and reconfigure in a different format. The Kardashians' capacity for love is great and adaptable; theirs is the broadest tent. I also find it pleasing that they are constantly eating. They're very funny, even Kim, who can't move her beautiful face that much (Kim: "Did you know that I'm, like, the number-one Google search last week?" Kourtney: "Do you also know that you're number two on the dumbest people?"). They're having a laugh - though not all the time: traumatic, sad or frightening things happen to them too. Relationships break up in terrible ways, people are left devastated. They seem ridiculously plastic and fake, but also ridiculously human and real. That's what keeps people watching. Their closeness as a family seems culturally more European or Middle Eastern than American (the late father, Robert Kardashian, was of Armenian descent). I'm interested in their take onrace: they're often berated for appropriating African-American culture, but doing that skims too easily past the fact that if Kim, Kourtney andKhloé had been transplanted to agrittier, less wealthy context as children, they are (naturally) blackhaired and brown-skinned enough to have been called names at school. It pleases me, a s a brown-skinned person , that these essentially eastern-looking women are considered the acme of beauty. It's a nice change from milk-fed blondes. I'd have liked to have seen a bit of that when I was growing up. As I was trying to show my mother, their deliberately melodramatic lives are anchored in a healthy family model. They are completely honest with each other. They have no secrets. They are monumentally loyal, notably to their mother, Kris, who is also their manager. Kris is hard as nails and faintly monstrous. She is also patient, loving and kind, and an old-school matriarch. (Kris has lived about six different lives, all of them fascinating.) I'm not suggesting that there aren't better things you could do with your time - Alan Hollinghurst's new novel is his best so far, in my view. But there are lots of ways of understanding whatmakes us alike as human beings, and you could do a lot worse than a leisurely veg on the sofa with the Kardashians. Long may they reign .