Paris pity

Paris the memoir by Paris Hilton book review

I thought I would never feel sorry for a rich white person, but here I am.

One of my favorite book genres is memoirs, especially celebrity memoirs. I used to want to be a singer and actor. I lived nowhere near Hollywood, my adult teeth came in crooked, and after puberty I became a fat hunchback, not exactly who Hollywood wanted in the 90’s and 2000’s. Plus I’m half Native American, what roles would they have let me play? I also had stage fright, but I still auditioned for plays growing up, but I was never picked. So, celebrity memoirs show me the dark side, the part that relieves my soul that I never got the chance to be an actor…

Paris’ book was difficult to get through. While it established her life, familial relationships, when it got to the CEDU school system and then Provo Canyon School, I stopped reading consistently and took breaks. I had to keep putting it down. The physical and mental abuse was unwarranted. Every time she escaped, I wanted her to stay free knowing what she would face should she be returned. She painted herself becoming numb to the abuse and isolation. She just wanted to escape and in her head was the only place she could. “Here’s what I believe: Your reality is totally up for grabs; if you don’t create your own life, someone else will create something based on their own agenda and project that on you. Don’t let them do it, my loves. Don’t let them tell you that their something is bigger than your everything.” (Page 172). It definitely sounds like something out of manifesting of law of attraction which is confirmed later when she states she found solace in The Secret, the most famous law of attraction book. However, these thoughts were pre-manifest thoughts, she had compartmentalized her pain and the loss of her identity. She didn’t get to learn or play for two years, she had to do hard labor, not eat, not sleep, get abused sexually and physically… she lost two years of her youth which she tried to make up for when she got out. Time and youth are something nobody can ever recover.

She mentioned the abusers being Mormon which made me sigh in agreement. As an ex-mormon-convert, I’ve firsthand seen the cardboard cutout people, their arrogance of non-members, and experiencing very uncomfortable meetings with bishops about private things, I have no reason to believe they know of boundaries or respect them. Seeing as how mormonism has followed catholicism in its structure down to tithing, sacrament, confession, and even molesting children, it makes sense these people abusing children in a “school” is perfectly valid for them.  She also wrote of a “Bastardized Native American spirit quest” even apologizing that a sacred ceremony would be used in a way to torture children. I’m not from a nation that performs spirit quests, but from what I understand, it’s usually voluntary and is usually done alone at a certain age as part of a “coming of age” ceremony which many tribes and nations have, mine has one but I didn’t live on the rez. That didn’t offend me, it was bothersome that they’d force children into starving themselves, force manual labor on them in extreme elements and say it’s encouragement and growth. The part where they forced all the kids to bully one other was horrid. There’s a part where she states she used so many negative language and slurs after leaving the place and I’m going to say that sounded a bit like a reach. I think a lot of people want to blame one event in their lives where everything went wrong or made you into the person you are when I think everything in your life shapes you, good and bad. Maybe this did influence her bad behavior, maybe not, but it sounded more like she just didn’t want to admit she thought it was ok at the time.

The worst parts were when her parents seldom visited her and them not believing the abuse. So, I was never a bad kid who snuck out, I had a few rebellious moments, most teens do, it is just how you grow up… my mom would never NOT believe me if I told her something like that. Paris had to have been thinner, dehydrated, she had to have looked and sounded different, but her parents still believed they were saving their child. It was so disappointing, every time they didn’t believe her, I felt angry. I would never forgive my mom if I was sent to some “school” to be tortured. Paris still loves her parents, but it seems she doesn’t trust them as much. I can’t imagine how she felt to escape, relieved, but probably mentally and physically exhausted. She was a legal adult and she wanted to escape the pain by partying. She wanted to reclaim her image, take control of her own life, make her own money, and build her own brand. She didn’t want people to see her as a victim, most people don’t…unless you’re Taylor Swift.

While I’ve never been a party person, Paris was the essence of Party in the 2000s. You had to have grown up with this up-close celebrity culture, it was quite invasive, the fashion, the “hoes” as they were known as, the bad behavior. Paparazzi had to get all that stuff. We didn’t have camera phones yet. This kind of cruel celebrity culture where everyone was encouraged to pile on and make fun, the kind where a celebrity used their press teams, not social media. The rise of reality shows, the early use of the internet for trashy thoughts, this kind of culture is hard for the younger generations to understand because the shift in culture is so drastic. I think it’s hard to believe life wasn’t also so invasive and judgmental. We’re oversaturated now and anyone can be a “star” for anything. Paparazzi aren’t the ones bringing out pictures, people are posting it all themselves. I loved her way of describing the club scene, life without invasive camera recording stuff in a club and leaking it to the tabloids. A time where your stupid mistakes weren’t broadcast or sold, and you didn’t have your guard up constantly. Even though I’m not a club party person, she painted a picture of her fast-track life and the era perfectly. She never told anyone about her life at the school, and she just wanted to be known as a hot model having fun. She also seemed to be partying because she had nightmares and couldn’t sleep. I remember Paris in the media, how she was viewed as just ditzy bimbo who was born rich. That was it.

 I will admit, I was a fan of The Simple Life seasons 1 and 2. I had her book, Confessions of an Heiress, but I didn’t hear about the tape for a long time. I didn’t think much about Paris after that. I didn’t have easy regular access to the internet back then. I had those entertainment shows and magazines for celeb gossip and news. I still remember the media lambasting her. I remember the endless jokes and then her Saturday Night Live appearance where she is making fun of herself but does not exactly address it. It’s all very innuendo… I didn’t think about it very much. She describes the hell she went through and how she thought she was going to lose her career. She’d had parts in some films, starting to sing, more modeling, and then someone comes in trying to capitalize off of an intimate moment for profit.

Before The Simple Life could premiere, she was plagued with her sex tape leaked. She wanted to be loved and safe with a man, even rejecting his idea of recording them, saying she didn’t want to but still felt pressured into it and took quaaludes. (I don’t know what that is…) Then it being released without her permission and everyone seeing it, but making fun of her…who was watching it? The people making fun of her! Revenge porn is awful and it’s always the woman’s fault for sending pictures or making videos. A lot of women and men do this, either in long distant relationships or just wanting to make their partner happy, or even being pressured to do it only for them to break up, and the other party leaking them. It’s sick. It always has been. Why do men approve the sexualization of women in all media marketing but are mad or shame women who actually have sex??? I liked her take on page 265: “I’ve survived it over and over again in different forms: the man who roofied me, the orderlies who molested me, the ex who released the sex tape, and every person who watched it. And this. Those people overpowered me and chained me down with shame and humiliation that rightfully belonged to them. It took me a long time to figure it out, and I’m still working on it, but when I place the shame where it belongs—on the people who hurt me—they lose their power, and I’m free.” I like that she finally stopped getting angry at everything and let it go. You can’t change a victim-blamer’s mind, but once you stop giving them power to shame you, you win.

When she mentioned that she could get a GED if she needed one, I went to look up if she did get one. I kept seeing that she did, but Paris never mentions it herself. During all her troubled youth schooling, she didn’t receive her school credits. I ended up cheating and looking up her law breaking history. She was arrested for DUI and driving on a suspended license. She described these situations as misunderstandings… driving without her lights on a well-lit block, barely a DUI percentage and then being told she had dispensation to drive to work while her license was suspended. Apparently, her lawyer was wrong, and her license was straight up suspended and so she had to go to jail. The judge sounded so exceptionally mean by wanting to make an example out of her, yet we know how lenient most judges are for celebrities. When she went to jail, she ended up with severe anxiety attacks because of being reminded of Provo. Her lawyer tried to get her house arrest, but the judge came back to overturn that and put her back in jail. If you knew Paris Hilton, you’d know house arrest would already torture her, as someone who loves going out, traveling, partying, that would have been sufficient punishment, I think. I don’t know how much to believe about her driving crimes, I could be falling for a spin doctor too but the anxiety attacks and PTSD in jail is something I believe. I have been to jail and that was enough, it’s hard floor, no privacy, it’s dirty, cops yell at you and call you by your last name, the floor is hard, it’s cold, you aren’t allowed to talk to other inmates, you can’t get your meds, there was nothing to eat, they said I could eat a peanut butter sandwich…I’m allergic to peanuts! I had to go to court for nine months and when I was called for jury duty a few years later, I didn’t want to face my place of injustice. I could see the same thing happening to her in regard to a torture school and jail isolation. Isolation is still used for torture. Humans (most of them) are social creatures, of course forced loneliness would mess with your psyche.

Paris talked or seemed to be advertising her product lines and such. She named a few of her movies I’d never heard of and must check out. Repo! The Genetic Opera sounds crazy enough for me to like. One of the lighter parts of her story is where she took Kim Kardashian and a girl named Caroline on a trip to Ibiza, after the club, she fell asleep on a pool floater, she and Caroline ended up half a mile from the shore, which was funny. I wish there were more heartfelt moments or happy memories, but they were more prevalent pre-Provo. She had this great relationship with her grandma whom she called Gram Cracker which was sweet.

I appreciated that some of the most grueling parts were interrupted with the memory of something else. It helped with the extreme tension all those scenes had. They’d be very random or only loosely based on the thought at hand. She mentions she has ADHD in her forward, something I have as well, but unmedicated for the last 6 years, I understand her thought processes but sometimes the story was too scattered to follow, simple edits for those stories could have helped.

She briefly described being unready to be a mother with all her trauma and got an abortion. It was not detailed, just the thought process behind it. Most women without trauma aren’t even ready to mother in their twenties. I am pro-choice even though I also grew up catholic, but religion should have no say in a woman’s personal medical decisions. She then had her storage unit’s items broken into and someone had a website ready for people to see what was in it… that part was horrible, as someone who has lost all my belongings and know what could be revealed in my journals, medical and other records, that invasion of privacy is so twisted. She was even still numb to it at that point, she was used to her privacy never being granted.

There were a lot of insightful and well written poetic parts I loved but they were almost all in the darkest part of the novel. “Time slipped out of joint, like a dislocated shoulder. / Silence. / The Darkness was so all-consuming, the only way I could stay alive was to find a source of light inside myself. I don’t know how else to explain it. / I fell inward, and I found a beautiful world. / I built a beautiful home.” (Page 171). Imagine facing such despair, you have to imagine a nice place. I hope she doesn’t have to keep revisiting these dark moments, she deserves to escape it. She was a normal rebellious kid who snuck out, she didn’t seem to be doing drugs or stealing. I think she was born into the wrong family, they all wanted to be prim and proper and reserved, but Paris broke that image and they had to send her away, even telling everyone she’d gone to a London boarding school. If you have to lie about it, maybe you’re doing something wrong, Mr. and Mrs. Hilton…

The book ended on an open end of her life as she was undergoing fertility treatments to start a family with her husband. One of her dogs was lost and never found, that part affected me more than I thought it would. Sometimes it hurts to not know the answers more than knowing, as someone who has lost pets before, there’s this empty spot where you can’t shake the feeling of loss or endless questions on what happened. I know that was painful for her.

I may have been manipulated. Maybe. I hope Paris was being honest with her readers.

I actually closed to the book and started to cry. I’ve read many celebrity memoirs and I’ve never cried from them. It’s actually hard for a book to make me cry, movies cheat and use music or flashbacks or have the characters crying…but books can’t show it the exact same way. This was a pretty good but very soul-smashing book, it’s hard to get through some parts, and maybe for someone without ADHD it might be hard to follow but I’d recommend it if you wanted to understand why she is this way. She doesn’t seem like just the party girl ditz anymore…