Unless you’ve been under a rock, there’s no way you haven’t seen Kim Kardashian’s, ahem… exposing photo spread in Paper Magazine threatening to “Break the internet.” Though the photo spread did not succeed in its threat, it certainly has created an energetic, and, at times, hilarious, commentary on the photos and the star’s curvaceous body.

One of the funniest (yet kind of also desperate) contributions to the publicity spectacle was made by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has since been re-Tweeted over 3,000 times: The encyclopedic museum called foul on the originality of Kim’s undoubtedly digitally enhanced asset, Tweeting a picture from behind of a Neolithic female figure sculpted in the tradition of steatopygous. Steat-o-what? Whatever.

Steatopygous female figure, ca. 4500–4000 B.C.; Final Neolithic
Courtesy Twitter.

There is indeed an uncanny resemblance between the behinds of the two subjects. On the Met’s site the description of the roughly 6,000-year-old ceramic figure certainly matches Kim’s build—“a fleshy abdomen and massive thighs and buttocks, all undoubtedly indicative of nourishment and fertility.”

Curiously it can be found in American paintings curator Barbara Weinberg’s “perfection” category online. Okay, Barbara. Though we are not sure any woman wants to admit to having “massive thighs,” no doubt Kim and the Kardashian brood will be pleased to have been recognized by the Met as a figure of perfection. It’s just more fodder for those tracking her interest in art (see: “Why are the Kardashians so Obsessed with Art?“).

No surprise to find that social media publicity hound (read: desperado) Jerry Saltz was also looking to cash in on Kim’s butt. He broadcast an image of the sculpture. Saltz also wisely questioned whether or not Kim’s body had been Photoshopped (of course it was, look at her waist!), disputing photographer Jean Paul Goude’s claims that he did not use Photoshop on Kim’s body at all.

Sadly this is not the first time that Kim has been the subject of a critical debate and comparison involving artworks: Last November, Saltz wrote a prolonged essay on Kim and her husband Kanye West comparing them to Jeff Koons’s sculptures.

Oh dear, it is hard to know who’s using whom in this publicity spectacle. Shameless arse.