Paris: The Memoir(23)
I begged my parents to be chill. “Why can’t I just work? Just let me get an agent and start modeling full time.”
Agents were interested in me. I was good on the runway—long legged and tall like Dad and Papa—and the designers I modeled for were thrilled whenever I showed up on Page Six, unlike my parents, who acted like it was the end of the world. Being at school made me feel like shit about myself. Being backstage at a runway show—everyone rushing back and forth in a fog of hairspray and frenetic energy—I felt tall and confident. Modeling gave me an opportunity to shine, while every school day felt like another setup for failure.
Mom and Dad were pissed at first, but then they got weirdly quiet. They sent me to a therapist, who was kind of a joke to me, but it seemed to make them feel better. I understood the gravity of the situation, but I thought I was handling it. Getting work. Learning the business. Cultivating connections.
It made me feel like I was going somewhere.
Like I could really be successful at this.
In February 1997 I turned sixteen. I wanted my party in LA so Gram Cracker and Papa and Nanu and all my LA cousins and friends could be there. Mom worked with Brent Bolthouse and Jen Rosero to throw an incredible sweet-sixteen party at Pop, a club on Highland where kids under eighteen could go on Thursdays and Saturdays. That was one of my first-ever nights out in Hollywood and definitely the sweetest sweet-sixteen I’ve ever been to.
My mom threw an epic, epic party.
Everyone was dressed to kill. Brent brought in DJ AM. Nicky and I and all our friends felt so grown up. We’re at this club! With this amazing DJ! And we look so hot! It was thrilling.
“You were bright eyed and bushy tailed,” Brent tells me now in a big-brotherly way, but I didn’t feel like a kid anymore. Before I stepped out on any runway, I looked in the mirror, and there was a woman looking back at me. It was helpful that Wonderbra was having a moment—maybe because the trend was for women to be skinny, which made them naturally flat chested. Wonderbra was born in the 1960s during the reign of the bullet bra, and it was ready for a comeback. I embraced that dynamic and made it work for me, and later on, like 2015ish, I designed my own dream push-up bras under the Paris Hilton brand.
I have to be careful wearing push-up bras these days, because it always sparks rumors that I’m pregnant, and the most annoying thing that could possibly happen when you want to have a baby is constant Twitter and tabloid rumors that make people go, “Paris looks pregnant. Pregnant, Paris? Still not pregnant? How ’bout now? You look kinda pregnant. Why aren’t you pregnant?” Ugh. Stop talking. It’s beyond.
Wait. What were we talking about? Reverse engineer for a sec.
Wonderbra.
Bolthouse.
Sweet sixteen.
Yaasssss! I felt so ready to go out and conquer the world. I was excited about driving. You can get wherever you need to go in New York in cabs or on the subway, but I figured I’d end up in LA most of the time if I pursued modeling, acting, and music, which seemed to be the direction I was heading. Veterinary school was not going to do it for me, but I loved the idea of using my platform to do activism on behalf of animals the way Tippi Hedren and Brigitte Bardot did.
Since I wasn’t in school, I could sleep in and be fully rested when I went out at night to explore the city. There was always something interesting going on, beautiful clothes to look at, fascinating people to watch, dancing to be done. The challenge of sneaking out was like a game, and I was good at it. When 30H was dark and silent, I’d tiptoe down the hall in my tracksuit and sneakers. I dragged my friends out with me, if they were willing to go, and I made a lot of new friends who were night owls like me.
Mom and Dad were killing it—running multifaceted business endeavors and managing massive teams—which should have made it easy for me to come and go as I pleased, but Mom’s a smart cookie. If she found a business card or cocktail napkin with a phone number on it, she changed the 1 to a 7 or the 3 to an 8. I’d call these people and they’d be like, “What the hell?”
Nicky was a relentless tattletale. Except when she wanted to come out with me. But that was only on weekends. She was a homebody most school nights. Not me.
When the school year ended, we went to the Hamptons, where everyone was calmer and happier, in beach mode, until we heard that Princess Diana had been killed in a mad car chase fleeing the paparazzi. Nicky and I were devastated. We adored Princess Diana. Now she was in Heaven with Marilyn, forever young, forever perfect. We didn’t stop to wonder why everyone wants women to stay young if dying is the only way to do it. And I didn’t connect her death with the paps who waited for me outside the clubs at night. To me, they were just a well-meaning gaggle of basic sweetie pies. So flattering and funny.
We were on the other side of the looking glass back then, consuming all those tabloid photographs that made Diana an icon.
“They killed her,” Mom said flatly. “They hunted her down like a pack of coyotes. Do you see now? Do you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you?”
I did, but if I wanted to succeed as a model, I needed to be seen. I had to be out there getting photographed.
We went back to New York, and—as my parents feared—pictures of me did start showing up in the tabloids. Dad was silently irate. Mom cried daily. They raged that I was breaking their hearts, becoming a bad influence on my siblings, throwing my life away, acting like a spoiled, out-of-control brat. It was the same dialogue over and over.