Kim Kardashian Dresses As Tiger King’s Carole Baskin For Halloween

Celebrities are getting dressed up for Halloween and Kim Kardashian West is keeping things topical for 2020 by unveiling her costume as Tiger King/Dancing With The Stars’ Carole Baskin. Kim K posted her Tiger King-inspired Halloween look in a photo spread that included her three of her four children with Kanye West dressed up as Tigers. What’s already getting people buzzing, however, is that the person in the photo dressed as the Joe Exotic to Kim’s Carole Baskin is definitely not Kanye. But before anyone gets into an uproar about some kind of pop-culture scandal, everything is fine here, as we’ll explain below.

So who is the guy dressed as Tiger King in Kim Kardashian’s Halloween photo? Why it’s her best friend Jonathan Cheban! Any fan of Kim K’s life and the Keeping Up With The Kardashians franchise knows Cheban all-too-well and can appreciate the sly humor in this particular costume reference. Obviously, Kanye is too busy in the final stretch of his presidential campaign to indulge in Halloween cosplay… Maybe next year.

Of course, like everything else Kim Kardashian does, this Tiger King Halloween costume is already becoming a kind of cultural lightning rod. Some responses on Twitter include criticisms of the reality star using her family in celebration of two (allegedly) unscrupulous individuals:

Of course, that sort of pearl-clutching is setting off other fans, who think people tearing down Kim K for referencing Tiger King are being hypocritical. Netflix‘s Tiger King docu-series made it clear that both Joe and Carole have (potentially) stepped outside the law in pursuit of building their respective exotic cat zoos. That’s not to mention the renewed interest from law enforcement in the strange disappearance of Carole’s first husband.

And yet, society has made Carole Baskin a legitimate celebrity despite the shadow of Tiger King hanging over her – to the point that Baskin was a major draw for one of America’s biggest mainstream shows (DWTS). So it’s hard to argue that Tiger King’s stars are somehow off-limits to other celebrities.