Who gets to say what people call you, or how people see you? In a just world, the answer might always be “you”; in this world, it’s often disputed, and the outcome—the rules, and the winner—depends on who’s looking at you, and on what words, images, allies, and (not least) funds you have on your side.

You might say that Kim Kardashian knows the rules: ten seasons into “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” three years into her relationship with Kanye West, she and her sisters are certainly familiar with the reality-warping lens of reality TV. She seems to know—though she might not put it this way—how all representations are mediated, how what you see depends on what you’re expecting, how no one picture can be the one “real you.”

But that does not mean each portrayal is equally true. Some are more fun; some come with better focus. Some show more skin; some show blemishes. And some give their subject more control than others.

Enter the selfie. Kim Kardashian’s almost comically thick book “Selfish”—four hundred and fifty glossy pages, published by Rizzoli this past May—collects photos of Kim by Kim, from a 1984 Polaroid of little Kim putting an earring on little Khloé to shots from Kim and Kanye’s epic wedding. Most are headshots—in limos, in hotel rooms, in low light at night clubs; dozens are come-hither photos or revealing full-body shots. We see Kim getting dressed or undressed, lounging poolside or couchant on beds or “in my closet in Miami trying on clothes.” Kim dons a fur hat fit for a chic Russian winter, poses with a flashbulb above a toilet (“I love bathroom selfies”), models huge amber sunglasses, blows us a kiss. Often she does snap pics in bathrooms, where other photographers may not dare to tread.

“Selfish” shows Kim having fun, Kim in control of her image, even when she looks wild, or exhausted—no wonder she’s usually smiling_. Since choice or chance gave me a way of life without privacy,_ the book says, I’ll violate my privacy myself, and I’ll have a good time doing it, too. Many of Kim’s selfies highlight her very round breasts, before, during, and after the roundness created by pregnancy. All are pictures she chose to take, and chose to print.

And yet, as both the pictures and the thin captions acknowledge, she could not have done it all herself. “I can look at any photo of myself,” she writes in one caption, “and can tell who did my hair and makeup, where I was and who I was with.” She goes on to name that day’s makeup artist, Stephen Moleski, who emphasized her feathery, dark lashes. Along with fame, and self-indulgence, and sex appeal, Kim’s selfies project informality, mutability, and even vulnerability—she expects to be looked at, as she looks back at you.

It’s easy to object to the Kardashians, as to any brand built on conspicuous consumption, or on making a perfect (and perfectly unaffordable) female body. But it’s also worth asking what fans see in them, and in Kanye, and for that matter in Taylor Swift, or David Bowie; all these very photogenic figures present what the Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt has taught us to call “self-fashioning,” the presentation of what and who you are, not as something fixed and secret, to cherish in private, but as an example, something you yourself created (with help) in order to make your way in the world.

You can make bolder arguments for “Selfish,” too. Our society keeps on giving you (yes, you) new reasons to hate your body. What if selfies, the genre—and what if “Selfish,” the book—are new ways to show us how to like it? What if Kim Kardashian—or someone who looked, in her selfies, just like Kim Kardashian—were recovering from a long illness, or a truck accident?

What if she were a trans woman? All of us have felt uncomfortable in our bodies, but not for the same reasons, nor to the same degree. Celebrities have special reasons to feel uncomfortable, since people are constantly watching them, but also special ways to do something about it: money, and time, and people who pay attention when a celebrity says, in public, “That isn’t me; this is me; look at this, instead.” It may not work: we may go back to watching the sex tape. But celebrities get to try.

Caitlyn Jenner has certainly tried. The Internet greeted her skeptically at first, as though coming out as trans might be a ratings stunt: she’s no longer married to Kris Kardashian, but her new reality show, “I Am Cait,” is produced by Bunim/Murray, which makes “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” and her coming out in effect began with a leak from TMZ.

But the longer the story continues, the better she looks, both literally (as in Annie Leibovitz’s photos for Vanity Fair) and politically. “With attention comes responsibility,” Jenner said at the ESPY awards, nearly quoting Spider-Man. Then she promised to use her own story, her access to spotlights, to help “change the way that trans people are viewed.”

“The uncomfortableness of being me never leaves all day long,” Jenner told Buzz Bissinger, in Vanity Fair. That magazine profile, even more than most, is a words-and-pictures affair, and Leibovitz’s photographs were its best part. The happiest photo shows Caitlyn with sunglasses, in the driver’s seat of a sports car, in a red long-sleeved dress with an inset swoop, almost a Nike swoosh, on one shoulder. A caption identifies the car as a Porsche, a gift from Kris. But neither the dress nor the car is where your eye falls—your gaze stops at Caitlyn’s sunglasses, where she looks back at you. She radiates total control.

Then there’s the second-best photograph: Caitlyn in her dressing room, eyes closed, in soft light, like the kid before the television in the old MTV ad, as if surrendering to the overwhelming force of something: fame? nature? love? A mirror behind her reflects her profile, and her bust. This photo says that in order to become the person she wants to be, she needs help.

It also says that she gets it. “I never had, until a couple of weeks ago, a professional come in and do my makeup. What a difference,” Caitlyn says, in the one-minute promo for “I Am Cait.” She’s acknowledging the difficult work of beauty, which people who live as men may never know. But she’s also acknowledging—or almost acknowledging—the paid professionals who make her look good.

Bissinger writes that, by the end of the shoot, Caitlyn’s “fear that she would not be comfortable with herself had evaporated.” Jenner herself was not so categorical: after her much praised speech at the ESPYs, she wrote on her blog, “It was a little difficult for me to watch myself. While I felt like I looked great and that the gown looked fabulous, I still have a voice issue. . . . However, I hope that people don’t listen to the pitch of my voice, but listen to what I have to say.”