Paris Hilton, the nasally baby-voice of the early 2000s, looks to be almost frozen in time. Perpetually toned and blonde, with low-rise sweatpants and daddy’s money, she’s either a vapid representation of a society in decline or the face of a privileged and wryly self-aware youth–depending on how you see her.
Really, she’s a blank canvas for whatever you want her to be; her vacant stare might belie a shrewd and curated image, or it could be exactly what it appears to be. A painfully beautiful waif, caught in a sort of permanent adolescence, the girl who pioneered the very concept of “famous for being famous.”
Hilton isn’t all that talented; she had a few false starts at an acting career, and at least a dozen mediocre songs. “Platinum Blonde,” her 2011 single, features heavy, sneering autotune and the line “Don’t you wanna be totally hot like me? A celebrity…platinum blonde!” Is it self aware? Is it awful? Is it ignorant? Yes, yes, and yes. Like her famous cropped white tank top that read in thick black type “STOP BEING POOR,” her music is almost comically cruel.
Still, she’s always been in on the joke. She never once appeared earnest, never faltered in her shining, tacky facade, and rarely let on that she knew exactly what she was doing. A troll before the concept was fully formed in the zeitgeist, she’s a satire of herself and her own privilege.
Now, as a 39-year-old woman, hurtling towards middle age and by extension, irrelevance, it seems that this young! fun! persona has grown less endearing. She’s gone from an affected baby voice to an affected vocal fry, perhaps in an attempt to come off more “real” (since that’s what seems to invoke sympathy these days), and has gone from sex-doll style, thick pink lipstick, and eyeshadow, to a bare, no-makeup-makeup look.
To clarify, pointing out the affectation of her new persona is not an insult to her–the opposite, actually. It’s a compliment to her intelligence: she knows what’s hot and what’s not, and right now the polished bombshell girly-girl is so not.
The intentionality behind her choices also does not make her any less genuine. Yes, there is a certain artificiality to almost everything she does, but, as exemplified in the new documentary, This is Paris (available for free on YouTube), she is, more than anything, a traumatized human being, who just so happens to be beautiful and wealthy and “lucky,” by pretty much any standard.
