Paris: The Memoir

When Hilton is 19 years old, she signs on with a modeling agency. She knows she is funny and beautiful, and she has started a side business that helps her get paid to go to parties. One day, Hilton has a meeting with Harvey Weinstein and a producer friend. The producer and Hilton are uncomfortable by the comments Weinstein continually makes to Hilton, and they have very little hope the project will go forward. The next night she goes to an event, and Weinstein tries to get her attention. Hilton tries to avoid him and goes into the women’s restroom where Weinstein follows her and tries to get into the stall until a security guard comes in and removes him. She never tells anybody because she understands that the way to survive in the business is to stay quiet. She meets a man with the nickname of Scum, and the two start dating. One night he wants to record them having sex. She does not want to, but he finally convinces her by telling her that another woman will do it with him if she will not. She takes Quaaludes and drinks in order to make the tape.

Hilton sees herself as a performance artist, but it takes her years to come to this idea of herself. She is asked to model for David LaChapelle. She believes that modeling for him is performance art. She starts shooting with David, and he gives Hilton freedom while he is photographing her. For one photograph, she and Nicky are standing by a pink Rolls-Royce and a rusty phone booth near a notorious hotel. Nicky is sophisticated while Hilton wears short shorts and a jacket without a shirt underneath. In another photo, she is spread out on the sand at the beach with men standing around her. She does not know at the time that she has a nipple exposed. David then wants to shoot at her grandparents’ house, so they sneak into the home while her grandparents sleep and take pictures. She says, “he wanted me to go full trash punk wild child” (224). She poses with her middle finger up. She says these photographs represent how she felt at the time. They capture her energy and rage. David submits the photos to Vanity Fair, and her parents are livid when the photos are published. Her mother understands that the photos can help Hilton’s career, but she has always wanted her children to fit into high society. Kathy is unable to get the photos pulled from the magazine.

Hilton has started dating Jason Shaw. Gram Cracker dies shortly after Hilton turns 21. Fox pitches an idea for The Simple Life to Hilton, and while they originally want Nicky on the show with Hilton, Nicky turns it down, and Hilton asks Nicole Richie to join her. Production requires 16-hour days, and the women are given a lot of control over the characters they will play. They decide they want their story to be about two women who conquer the obstacles they face. Social media begins to emerge. Hilton has not told Jason about her past, and she knows she is not in a place where she can make a commitment. She learns that she is pregnant, and she feels incredibly anxious in response. She has an abortion. While she feels sorrow over her choice, she says she also believes she did the right thing. She does have thoughts such as, “What if I killed my Paris?” (238). 

Hilton’s manager calls her one day when she is in Australia to tell her that a sex clip of her has been released on the internet. She calls the man who made the tape and begs him not to release the full video, but he insists on his right to release it. While Hilton is on a plane back to the United States, she tells the story to a sympathetic woman next to her, but when she arrives home, she realizes that the woman was a planted reporter and has released what Hilton has said. 

The Simple Life is a great success. She does not believe her success or the success of her show has come from the sex tape, but she wishes she could have proven it. Even today, she will be in a business meeting and think about how most of the people there have seen her naked. She maintains that she does not want pity, but she speaks out against the shame that is placed on women more than on men.

Hilton acknowledges that she was born into privilege but maintains just how hard she has worked. Hilton’s television show is going well; she has started a lifestyle brand, and she buys a house. Catchphrases from The Simple Life are catching on around the country. One day, when Hilton has a run in with paparazzi after her home is broken into, she gets in contact with Elliot Mintz, whose task it is to fix problems. Afterward, Hilton tells him that she wants to be famous and seen as a tastemaker. 

Hilton says that she is the only one who is surprised when she is on the cover of Playboy. Hugh Hefner repeatedly tries to get Hilton to pose for his magazine, but she always turns him down, as her mother did when she was younger due to her own mother’s influence. Hefner keeps negotiating with Hilton, but she still keeps turning him down because she does not want to perpetuate the idea that she is a “slut.” Hilton gets a call one day congratulating her on her Playboy cover. The magazine managed to put her on the cover by saying that she is the Sex Star of the Year. By doing this, they can put her picture in their magazine, claiming it is news, not a pictorial, without needing her permission or paying her for the picture. Both Hilton and her parents are upset, but they do not confront Hefner. She explains that before the #MeToo movement, people were expected to just take such abuse and not say anything, but now she believes that she consents to behavior when she remains silent. 

When Hilton is in her twenties, she is diagnosed with ADHD and is put on Adderall, which is sometimes helpful and sometimes problematic for her. She believes that her obsession with technology makes sense in the context of her ADHD. The internet made it so that she never has to be alone. She starts getting free products sent to her because whenever she tweets about one, sales go up dramatically. Her song, “Stars Are Blind,” comes out in the summer, and she believes it is the most real she has ever been at that point. 

Hilton explains that when she and her friends go out, Elliot Mintz is usually the designated driver, but one night she has been working many hours, and she drinks a margarita. She gets stopped on the way home by the police and her blood alcohol level is .08, the threshold for being charged with driving under the influence (DUI). She calls Elliot, and he suggests she go home to the paparazzi that are inevitably outside her house, so they can see that she is not drunk. She receives a fine, license suspension, and probation. She also has to take alcohol education classes. 

There is miscommunication over when she can begin driving again to work, and when she is pulled over one night for speeding and having her lights off, she finds out that her lawyer never filed the paperwork for her to get permission to drive to work. She is sentenced to jail for 45 days in a maximum security facility. The trauma from her days in the boarding schools comes back to her.

Hilton plans to turn herself in the night after the MTV Awards, believing the paparazzi will be preoccupied. When she gets to the awards, Sarah Silverman uses her time to talk about Hilton going to jail, and people begin cheering. Hilton does turn herself in after the awards ceremony and she is called numerous degrading names by other prisoners. Hilton has severe panic attacks from PTSD while in prison. Hilton gets permission to finish out her sentence on house arrest, but when the original judge finds out, he gets the house arrest pulled, and she has to return to prison. She is put in solitary confinement because the warden believes she is not safe with the general population. One night, she wakes up to find a guard standing over her with a camera ready to take and sell pictures of her. While her lawyer wants to continue fighting, she is resigned to her fate, and she goes to her secret place in her mind where she used to go during her time at the boarding schools. When she does, she realizes that the life she dreamed about while detained when she was younger is very similar to the life she is living now.