Paris Hilton has long occupied a particular place in celebrity culture. She’s worn monikers (party girl, reality star, heiress, entrepreneur) like Christian Louboutins, pulling them on with the chameleonic, unswervable quality of a calculated ‘It’ girl.
Like several aughts-famous women (Pamela, Britney) who existed in the turbulence of feverish tabloid
It’s a timely release, published amid a wave of long-overdue pop culture revisionism, as we look back on how many of these women were treated. Three of Viva’s resident bibliophiles convened for a book club to discuss Paris: The Memoir, the chaos of the aughts, and the early internet.
Dan Ahwa, creative and fashion director: Along with the expected pop culture inclusions (Y2K fashion, The Simple Life, Stars Are Blind), there were some frank and personal moments too (an abortion, physical abuse, pedophiles). It took me a few hours to read. What I was really missing, like any good autobiography, was the inclusion of an archive image insert. Everyone loves those in an autobiography, right?
Emma Gleason, commercial editor: Yeah, I think that was a real missed opportunity. She’s clearly a very visual person — something she discusses frequently in the book — and her look is such an important part of her power and success; not to mention, has been part of so many famous cultural moments. Pictures could have also helped visualise and contextualise her writing, which leans into the complexities and rhythm of the ADHD brain.
DA: It’s an interesting time to be in your mid to late 30s/early 40s. We’re this weird and specific generation who had to deal with some toxic behaviour early on in our careers that we kind of swept under the rug until now, prompted in part by an entirely new generation fuelled by transparency. So we’re not old and not young, just trying to survive every single global crisis that we’ve inherited. Paris’ experience is something that addresses this. Although she acknowledges she comes from a place of privilege, you can tell she’s done some soul-searching here. Much like Brooke Shields has in her new two-part documentary Pretty Baby.
EG: It was so, SO toxic. Looking back, I can’t really believe how normalised that was. Women were hyper-sexualised, but also judged so harshly. The internet was a wild west, without the boundaries or language we have now for ideas of privacy and consent.
DA: That Jackass, American Pie bro culture didn’t help either. It reminds me of the way people behaved watching the Netflix doc Woodstock 99. This kind of testosterone-fuelled jock behaviour only reinforced a type of masculinity that made it almost permissible for people to slut-shame and demean women further during this time. You see it when David Letterman interviewed Paris and drilled her about going to jail for a DUI. She was only 19, really, and to have this played out in front of the world at that age would have been tough.
EG: She was really young, I didn’t realise how young at the time. I found it really interesting what she discusses in the book about making a choice between victim and siren as a coping mechanism and regaining power through that.
DA: I didn’t realise she was diagnosed with ADHD and the book explains a lot of behaviour that went unchecked when she was young. Her family are pillars of the American Dream too, so it must have been a lot of pressure to maintain a certain puritanical perspective for the Hiltons. They came up in the Reagan era, which was all about capitalism, the unofficial royal family of America. Not unlike the British royals, it was interesting to read how both Kathy and Rick Hilton swept things under the rug with a stiff upper lip.
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Advertise with NZME.EG: There’s one section where she outlines her family’s “rules” that really resonated. “If you don’t talk about a thing, it’s not a problem. If you hide how deeply something hurt you, it didn’t happen. If you pretend not to notice how deeply you have hurt someone else, you don’t have to feel bad about it.” We’ve all experienced something like that, some more than others, and her family really seemed to go all in on this repressive approach to personal issues.
DA: And this puritanical desire of Americans to ‘save’ their children from damnation. The book highlights how any type of conversion therapy — especially for teenagers who are trying to find themselves — is so dangerous.
EG: That section was very disturbing to read. Trying to change adolescents, or anyone, especially through abusive and traumatic “programmes” causes so much damage, and is so unnecessary. There’s a lot to be said about how religious organisations and faith can be used to justify oppression. I also think the idea of moralism, self-betterment, judgement, prosperity and worthiness are intertwined with capitalism and American culture to an extent where you can’t separate the two.
DA: The ghostwriter Joni Rodgers did a great job of letting Paris’ voice come through, even down to when Paris slips into mental notes, i.e. “mentally inserting Bye Felicia GIF.”
Julia Gessler, digital editor: I found some phrases quite charming — “Run, little lobsters, run!” or referring to makeup, and how we outwardly present ourselves, as our “hard candy coating”.
EG: She’s so funny, and quite frank. You also really get a sense of how her brain works. The writing jumps around, goes on tangents, has sidebars and brackets galore — something she acknowledges explicitly — as much of it explores her relationship with ADHD, a neurodivergence she describes as “exhausting and exhilarating” and a superpower. She paints a beautiful picture of the ADHD brain and what makes it exceptional — from a non-linear sense of time, to finding your passion — while also being frank about the challenges, like judgment, stigmatisation, and self-medicating.
DA: I liked how she marks moments in her life with what songs were hits that year or what TV shows were major. It’s true — a millennial’s sexual awakening truly was bolstered by Madonna music videos, Aaron Spelling and Calvin Klein ads.
EG: She nailed it. This book made me think a lot about the culture of the time, how we were all socialised within it, and how it shaped our idea of sex, attraction and presentation.
JG: Now, the media.
EG: It was a simpler time, pre-social media; a freedom that she discusses in a really nice way, explaining what it was like to live in the moment and to have to actually go out if you wanted social interaction or creative connection. Of course, she also tracks the rise of tabloids and paparazzi and the early internet (like Perez Hilton) and how lawless and cruel that was.
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Advertise with NZME.DA: The New York Post’s ‘The Bimbo Summit’ photograph of Paris, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan squeezed in the front seat of a car trying to escape paparazzi at the Beverly Hills Hotel is an example of just how toxic this entire TMZ era was, profiting off the misery and chaos of celebrities breaking down.
EG: She does also acknowledge that she used the press to her advantage to build an image. The pages that discuss the economy of social capital are very savvy, and from an early age — with a front-row seat to the excess of the 1980s, and family friends like Andy Warhol — she understood that partying could be work, and that she held a unique power. “An accomplished party girl is a facilitator, a negotiator, a diplomat — she’s the sparkler and the match.” She showed that you could take a different route, and many traditional avenues of success weren’t a fit for her, or were out of reach.
JG: One is suddenly aware of the mechanics of fame, how it’s engineered. She made the approach sound part enchanting game, part severe calculation, like if the Barbie franchise released a chess set.
DA: The fashion makes a great cameo, too. The Julien McDonald chainmail dress, the Heatherette brand, her iconic photoshoots with David La Chapelle, running up her mum’s credit card at Hotel Venus, a rave store owned by Sex & The City stylist Patricia Field. She really did help formulate a distinctive look during the 2000s that so many people are emulating today.
EG: Heatherette! I went straight on eBay after finishing this book to see what was sifting around, and had a dive into an oldest-to-newest Getty Images search. I remember reading that issue of Vanity Fair when it came out, and my teenage brain exploded. Those images are seared in my memory. She really knew how to create an image, and be part of a moment, and was ahead of her time in a way that I think we’re only just respecting properly.
DA: I agree. That relationship with media is interesting. Paris was one of the first real social media influencers and the first to experiment with Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Myspace, Pinterest. She’s built a brand on that and it shows she has some savvy. I think a lot of CEOs could learn a few things from Paris the business mogul and how she’s used new media to her advantage.
EG: She follows her instincts, and takes risks. Both of which seem rarer now than I think they used to be.
DA: Can you imagine what Paris Hilton would be like had she pursued her childhood career of becoming a veterinarian?
EG: I like to think we’d have gotten something like Selling Sunset but set in her plush veterinary clinic.
‘Paris: The Memoir’ (HarperCollins, $38) is out now.
Previously in the Viva Book Club: Everything we thought while reading Eleanor Catton’s ‘Birnam Wood’
