Paris: The Memoir(74)
When someone on a red carpet asked how I felt about the “Stupid Spoiled Whore” episode, I said, “Oh, I didn’t see it,” and then I mumbled something about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. What was I supposed to say? Frankly, I didn’t want to draw more attention to it. I always heard Mom’s advice in the back of my head: “Don’t give it oxygen.”
When a journalist told Matt about my muted red-carpet response, he said, “That shows how fucked up she is.”
Prior to #MeToo, we were taught to be cool, rise above, and accept stuff like that. My not wanting to watch his cartoon about my dog being shot and me coughing up ejaculate—that’s evidence of how fucked up I am. And what’s really fucked up is that I did accept it. I kept quiet about it. For decades. I debated even bringing it up here, because ick and because I hate hate hate conflict. They’re obviously better at bashing me than I could ever be at bashing them. Stuff like this was what Rap was all about. The only way I got through it was to stay quiet and stare at the floor.
I just can’t do that anymore. Advocacy work has taught me that “silence means assent”; if you don’t speak up when something is wrong, it’s the same as agreeing with it.
I’m so sad that Matt and Trey went that route. Sexualized bashing of young women is worse than politically incorrect; it’s dangerous. And it’s boring. It’s a failure of imagination. I keep wondering why they fall back on it, stretching for any remaining shock value. There’s another South Park episode in which Cartman is granted one wish by school faculty, and his wish is to have Selena Gomez beaten while he watches.
Process that script with me for a sec: A teenage girl is brought in to be beaten for the gratification of the protagonist. Someone beats her and then says, “All right, get her the fuck out of here.” As if the girl they’ve just assaulted is a piece of garbage to be disposed of. That’s the bar now.
Selena Gomez is one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet in your life, and at the time that show was aired, she was dealing with a terrifying stalker in real life. But this isn’t about who she is; it’s about who we all are. How is something like that accepted—by all of us—as funny? How do we not see that the treatment of It Girls translates to the treatment of all girls in our culture?
I’ll say again: I love South Park.
I’m not saying South Park is a terrible show or that they should be canceled. But I do hope that someday Trey and Matt will consult their better angels about the need to keep streaming “Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset.” And the Selena Gomez ep. Or the thing about Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus being murdered while people take pictures of—
Look, I’ve done and said some things I’m not proud of. I used to wear those horrific Von Dutch caps. I once went to a Playboy Mansion Halloween party dressed as Sexy Pocahontas. At eighteen, I got drunk and performed a totally inappropriate version of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” at a party, and yes, I knew aaaallll the lyrics. When I was put on the spot in an interview, I pretended I voted for Donald Trump because he was an old family friend and owned the first modeling agency I signed with—and when I left to go to another agency, he was furious and intimidated the shit out of me on the phone. The truth is even worse: I didn’t vote at all.
Am I standing by these choices? Would I make the same choices again, knowing what I know now? Of course not! None of that reflects the person I am now.
People evolve. We have the capacity to learn. And we all make mistakes when we’re young. We have to let go of the CEDU “dirt list” mentality and find a way to do accountability and grace at the same time.
They don’t match, but they go together.
You wake up one morning and say, “Wow, that was not a good look.” You make it right if you can. You apologize—in private where it counts, in public if it helps. And then you move on. I’m not pretending to be, like, the Dalai Lama in Louboutins here. I’m just saying, grace is available to all of us if we make it available to each other.
The Simple Life ran for five seasons. Lots of laughter. Lots of drama. During that time, boyfriends came and went: a Backstreet Boy, a couple of Greek heirs, a lot of hungry tigers, and what Demi Lovato calls “clout chasers.”
My book Confessions of an Heiress debuted at number 7 on the New York Times bestseller list, and I toured all over the place, connecting with hundreds of thousands of fans, loving my Little Hiltons. I did modeling, movies, and television, released several more fragrances, and collaborated on eyewear, skin care, shoes, bags—everything from phone cases to pillow shams. Eventually my brand expanded to encompass retail spaces, spas, and specialty hotels.
During all this—and everything else that was going on from summer 2007 to spring 2008—director-cinematographer Adria Petty followed me around with a handheld camcorder, shooting a crazy amount of footage for a doc called Paris, Not France. It started out as a behind-the-scenes thing for the album I was recording, but she so beautifully captured the frenetic pace and edgy vibe of my life at the time that we looked at this amazing footage and agreed: “This isn’t some DVD extra, this is a fucking film.” Adria put it all together with brilliant music, smash-cut editing, and commentary from Camille Paglia that elevated the film to a discussion of what celebrity had become.
Adria got the film into festivals all over the world—Cannes, Toronto, everywhere—and that scared me, because there was some stuff in it about the sex tape. And if that wasn’t enough, one day while we were filming, Elliot called to tell me that someone had “acquired” the contents of an old storage unit filled with my personal belongings, including family photos, private journals, and medical records. They wanted me to pay a huge sum of money to buy back my stuff, and if I didn’t, all these intensely private documents would be published on a subscription-based website, much like the sex video had been.