Kylie Jenner, pictured above wearing a fake lion’s head at Paris Fashion Week — as one is wont to do — is being accused of insensitivity toward victims of the 2021 Astroworld Festival tragedy after throwing her kids an apparent Astroworld-themed joint birthday party.
The bash, celebrating her daughter Stormi’s fifth birthday and son Aire’s first, featured large inflatable heads similar to those featured on the cover of Jenner’s on-again, off-again boyfriend Travis Scott’s 2018 album Astroworld. The heads were then likewise coopted for Scott’s Astroworld Festival, which took place in 2018 and 2019, and again in November 2021 when the tragedy occurred.
Ten people died from compressive asphyxiation due to crowd crush, with 25 total people hospitalized and hundreds more injured, as Scott continued to perform for over 30 minutes amid the hysteria. The rapper has since settled a civil lawsuit with one victim’s family, as others are expected to follow suit.
In photos and video of the event, which Jenner revealed in her Instagram stories on Wednesday, one head sat atop an inflatable slide while another was used as the entrance to the party, similar to the festival.
The couple had previously used the Astroworld theme for Stormi’s first, second, and third birthday parties, but seemingly retired the inflatable heads in 2022 for reasons that seemed obvious at the time. However, Jenner also was pregnant with her second child during last year’s bash (Aire was born the day after Stormi’s fourth birthday) so the party may have just been scaled back — not necessarily eliminated out of poor taste.
In either case, bringing back the theme was not exactly the best idea, much less gloating about it on social media. Several people popped off about the party theme in a Reddit thread, calling it “tasteless” and “tone deaf.”
“Isn’t this tasteless after the Astroworld tragedy … where children died,” slammed one user. “CHILDREN died at Astroworld — only fitting that they would make it into another birthday party theme,” seethed another. “So tone deaf.”
Likewise, news made its way to Twitter where others were similarly flabbergasted.
It’s unclear whether the party was filmed as part of an upcoming episode of Hulu’s The Kardashians, in which case it probably won’t be the last we hear of it when Jenner cries fat salty crocodile tears over the backlash. Get the tissues ready!