Paris: The Memoir(85)
I had to look away. I had to tell myself, This isn’t my fault. There’s nothing I can do. I couldn’t be part of this. What if someone on one of these forums remembered me? Hated me from back then? All that Rap stuff. The kangaroo kick. The stabbing plot that got blamed on me—all of it. My brand was more than my business; it was my identity, my strength, my self-respect, my independence, my whole life. I had to protect my brand. Anything off brand—no. Circle with a slash. Can’t have that.
I retreated to my safe ground: work.
Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012, and Twitter acquired Vine. I launched a line of eyewear in Shanghai and toured with my fifteenth fragrance, Dazzle, which is still one of my favorites and gave me a break from the Spanish model I was dating. I’d gone into a franchise deal that involved forty Paris Hilton retail locations, mostly in Europe and Asia, selling handbags, skin care, sunglasses, and other branded merchandise.
In 2013 and 2014, when I wasn’t doing DJ residencies in Atlantic City and Ibiza or playing shows in Spain, France, Portugal, South Korea, and the US, I was in the studio working on music of my own. I built new singles, “High Off My Love” and “Come Alive,” into my set along with my classic theme music. More than ever, I felt Ultra Naté’s “Free.”
I couldn’t shake the thought of the children being held at Provo Canyon School, but I felt exactly the way the school had trained me to feel: powerless.
I wanted to help, but I didn’t know who to go to. Anything I did meant risking my carefully constructed narrative. It meant potentially hurting or embarrassing my family.
I felt protective of Papa. He was healthy for his age, but some of the spark went out of him when we lost Nanu in 2004. He was never a super sentimental guy, but as I grew into my life as a businesswoman, we shared a lot of common ground. That relationship was important to me. In 2014, I leaned into my real estate interests, opening Paris Beach Club in the Philippines, and he was all about it. Whenever I took him out to dinner, I’d ask him if he wanted to go out the back way to avoid the paparazzi, but he was proud and happy to take my arm and go out the front.
It meant a lot to me to see my mom and dad so proud of everything I’d accomplished. I won Best Female DJ at the NRJ DJ Awards, and Time magazine reported that I was the highest-paid female DJ in the business, making up to a million dollars per gig. I’m still working toward the day when we can drop the “female” part of that conversation. There are so many killer women DJs out there now, the term feels dated and out of touch. Opportunities are plentiful; the boys have nothing to be afraid of. If you’re good, you’ll get work. Competition is healthy, right?
Nicky was killing it, too. Her book 365 Style was published, and she was engaged to James Rothschild, who was (a) wonderful and (b) a Rothschild.
All of which is to say, I didn’t want to rock the family boat by bringing up unpleasantness from the past.
In 2015 “High Off My Love” reached #3 on the Billboard club list, I played to a crowd of fifty thousand at Summerfest in Milwaukee, and Nicky married James at Kensington Palace. The low point was losing Tinkerbell, my sweet companion through so many highs and lows. She died of old age at fourteen.
TikTok launched in 2016, an instant sensation. Donald Trump became president. And I became an aunt when Nicky and James had a gorgeous daughter, Lily-Grace Victoria. Her little sister, Theodora Marilyn, was born in 2017.
Being Aunt Paris brought out a new level of fierce in me. As I watched these amazing little creatures grow, memories of my own early childhood bubbled up from the back of my mind. I was once that joyful, a free-spirited little mermaid of a kid. And then . . . things happened.
TikTok and Instagram made it easy for me to pretend my life was a perfect fairy tale, but in fact, my fairy tale life is the one that didn’t happen: elite prep school, Ivy League college, graduate studies abroad, a career in animal science, a nice husband and children. All that disappeared before I had a chance to even imagine it. Now I was trapped inside that Simple Life caricature, this me-but-not-really person who was out in the world living my life.
Social media became the new reality.
Selves became selfies.
Privacy was commodified.
Our collective attention span became ad space.
An entire generation of children grew up numbed by Ritalin and somehow managed to reinvent the art of connection.
I was carried by a tide of empowerment. It rose up under me as women of all ages grew weary of the way we’d been dismissed. Now I was working hard to shed my skin and leave behind the character with the baby voice. I wanted to be the woman Marilyn never had a chance to evolve into: It Girl gone Influencer.
Everything I do is tied up in swiftly advancing technology: music, social media, DJing, visual arts, product development and design, NFTs, and whatever comes next. Carter and I talk a lot about how we’ll raise children in the thick of it.
(We talk a lot about kids in general because we’re so excited to have kids one day.)
“I can’t imagine what it means to be a thirteen-year-old girl in this day and age,” I said. “We’ll have to be strict about screen time.”
“Our parents faced the same challenge,” said Carter, “except they had to be strict about computer time and video games. And their parents had to be strict about this new thing called television.”
It’s mind blowing, isn’t it? It’s all happening so fast.