I realise that maybe a lot of people either don't know that much about Paris Hilton because she's not as popular as she was in the 2000s and also some people might genuinely be too young to know much.
So like as a brief recap, in the 2000s, Paris Hilton was a popular celebrity, though I mean popular in terms of saturation, as she was rarely spoken about positively. The general consensus about her was that she was famous for being famous and that she was just a dumb blonde chick from a rich family.
That's not true. By the time she was catapulted into international fame, she already had a successful modelling career and had appeared in a couple of movies.
What catapulted her was the reality show This Simple Life in which she starred and a sex tape of her and her at-time boyfriend Rick Salomon that was leaked a week before This Simple Life aired.
You may have heard that Paris leaked it herself; she didn't. It was a horrific act done to her. She's spoken about it many times and how it negatively affected her.
Because the reaction was not sympathy for what was done to her or anger at whoever leaked it, but most everyone decided it was really funny. And so we got an SNL skit about it; it was parodied to hell and back in countless shows and movies. As aforementioned, she was accused of leaking it herself for personal gain. She was slutshamed and countless headlines accused her of sleeping around when she wasn't.
Salomon himself went on to distribute his own version of the tape named One Night in Paris that was 38 minutes long in order to make money on it.
Paris didn't make a single cent on it. And the money she received regarding a lawsuit against Salomon (he'd also sued her and her family) she had donated to charity and asked that a portion of whatever profit he makes/made be donated to charity.
You might note that the Huffpost I sourced for that first part is pretty passive aggressive toward her; that's not unique to Huffpost
It also feels prescient to mention that Paris was 19 when the sex tape was made and Rick Salomon was 31/32. She has talked in recent years about feeling coerced to film the tape and that she was "tipsy and tired" during the filming of it.
So what really happened is that when she was 22 years old, a tape of her being taken advantage of by a man more than a decade older was leaked and the world reacted by laughing at her and insulting her.
Despite this genuinely horrific trauma happening to her, she carried on and levied the fame she had to launch her into a very successful career.
Part of that was through reality TV and when she was on camera for that, she created a character to step into and even changed her voice to fit. And everyone ate up that character and never considered that she wasn't like that in real life, and people still believe this. Her on the matter:
“People think because of the character I played — people assume before they meet me that I’m a really ditzy dumb blonde,” she explained. “That’s the one thing that kind of annoys me sometimes. They just think because of the reality show that’s who I really am. But that was just a character that I created. I didn’t realize what a huge success [it would be] — that I would have to continue playing this character for five years. With everything that’s happening, though, with my business, I think people can understand that you couldn’t possibly get this far being a dumb blonde.”
From then on, she was constantly mocked in popular culture, ruthlessly attacked by tabloids and publicly villainised even though her character was just a dumb rich girl. It was just misogyny.
In 2007, a Gallup poll showed that only 10% of USAmericans feel any level of sympathy towards Paris, who had only four years earlier had a sex tape of her leaked, and 63% were very unsympathetic to her.
Paris Hilton has also been stalked several times.
One tried to break into her home in 2010.
Another was arrested for trespassing multiple times and attached her then boyfriend Cy Waits.
There was a guy from Germany who flew to LA to try and see her and was covered in tattoos of her.
And the antisemite who cyber-stalked her and her dad, making death threats against and being antisemitic to her even though the Hiltons are catholic.
Not to forget that the guy who: sent her a wedding dress in the mail asking her to marry him; flew a plane over their Malibu house with signs that read Can't Get Paris Whitney Hilton Out Of My Mind and Mr & Mrs Hilton, May I Court Your Daughter Paris?; and bought her a classic Cadillac and posed as a flower delivery guy so he could get past security and to Paris.
Beyond the sex tape, there's a string of similar incidents.
She was targeted by a hacker who stole over a 100k from her as well as nude photos.
She was in the film National Lampoon's Pledge This! for which she boycotted the premiere because the producers had added extra nude scenes without asking her permission. (She got sued for the boycott btw.)
When her debut album released in the UK, Banksy - yes that Banksy - pulled a stunt where he replaced 500 copies of the album across 48 shops with his own remixed version. The photo on the CD sleeve had been replaced with one of her topless with a dog's head superimposed on it.
Worth mentioning that Banksy's version, which was done in collaboration with Dead Mouse, had titles such as Why Am I Famous?, What Have I Done?, and What Am I For?
Also that a spokesman HMV (one of the shops) was quoted saying:
"It's not the type of behaviour you'd want to see happening very often. I guess you can give an individual such as Banksy a little bit of leeway for his own particular brand of artistic engagement. Often people might have a view on something but feel they can't always express it, but it's down to the likes of Banksy to say often what people think about things. And it might be that there will be some people who agree with his views on the Paris Hilton album."
Something tells me he wouldn't have said that if Bansky had targeted Justin Timberlake or James Blunt.
If you ask me, what Bansky did was lazy and misogynistic. Sure, the stunt itself and all the components involved are impressive. But they are ultimately in service of an unoriginal message about a safe target, and is just another part of misogynistic rhetoric against a woman who had become a public punching bag.
This isn't to say that Paris Hilton is innocent and never fucked up or ever made a mistake. She did, undoubtedly. She's spent time in jail for DUI, and was literally refused entry to Japan due to a drug-possession charge on her record. She's also said plenty of iffy things. There's worthwhile criticism you could make of her and how she acted back then.
But that's not what happened back then and what happened back then was misogynistic.
In recent times, Paris Hilton has turned her attention towards activism. She's specifically done a lot of work regarding the so- called "troubled teen industry".
And that's because she had been sent to several of them as a teenager. She talks about it in a documentary you can watch on YouTube. The worst of them was Provo Canyon School; she had been dragged out of her house in the middle of the night by two men while her parents watched on in order to get there, and while at the school, she underwent physical, psychological, emotional and sexual abuse.
She is doing very important work, and I think what happened to her very much underscores what I've detailed above.
She has also spoken about the abusive relationships she's been in throughout her life.
And considering everything she's been through and everything she's done, it's really not surprising that she's learned some things about what to do when you make a mistake and how to be a better person.
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