“This issue’s theme is legacy. It is something we celebrate, as with the beauty and great cultural impact of a place like Jamaica and a city like Kingston. It’s also something we interrogate. Paris Hilton has always challenged me to question my own preconceived notions; in retrospect, many of us are coming around to how harshly we judged young women like Hilton during the early aughts, an era that Gen Z has helped bring back for reevaluation.”
On disguising herself with a brunette wig and checking into the hospital under an alias to maintain privacy during her baby’s birth: “My entire life has been so public,” Hilton says over the phone in late January, hovering outside of the baby’s nursery and speaking quietly while he naps. “I’ve never had anything for myself. We decided that we wanted to have this whole experience to ourselves.”
On ensuring her son’s welcome into the world felt sacred and safe, after her own childhood ended abruptly:
“I want to protect him and to be with him every second,” she says. “You have this mother instinct that kicks in, which I’ve never had before. I feel so complete now.”
On her self-created character as a “dumb blonde with a sweet but sassy edge” as noted in her upcoming memoir, Paris: “I made sure I never had a quiet moment to figure out who I was without her. I was afraid of that moment because I didn’t know what I’d find.”
On Hilton’s infamous teenage years where she began club-hopping, partying and falling behind in her studies which led to her getting kicked out of two elite Manhattan private schools: “I was not a bad kid,” Hilton says. “I snuck out at night, got bad grades, ditched school. But my mom and dad were so strict. They wanted me to be home at 11:00.”
On how Hilton felt desperate to make up for lost time as a teenager and began modeling, going to fashion shows and movie premieres all while leveraging the paparazzi attention — gamely posing for high-value candid shots to land her in the tabloids: “I had no agent, no publicist, no stylist,” she says. “I had a fake email address and would pretend to be my [own] manager.” “I remember walking out with my sister and having 50 photographers screaming my name,” Hilton says. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is what love is.’ ”
On the treatment she received during the height of the tabloid era: “The way that I was treated—myself, Britney [Spears], Lindsay [Lohan], all of us—it was a sport,” Hilton says of the trio infamously featured on a 2006 New York Post cover above the headline “Bimbo Summit.” “We were just young girls discovering life, going out to a party. And we were villainized for it.”
On finally telling her full story: “I feel so proud of the woman that I’ve become, because for so long I kept all of that with me,” she says. “All the negative, horrible words that they would say to me every single day, that sticks with you. I just was not secure. Now I feel that people finally respect me and get me in ways that they never did.”
On how Hilton began to think of herself, privately, as asexual, after awful past sexual experiences including a male teacher grooming her in middle school: “I was known as a sex symbol, but anything sexual terrified me,” she says. “I called myself the ‘kissing bandit’ because I only liked to make out. A lot of my relationships didn’t work out because of that.”
[Photo Credit: Max Farago for Harper’s Bazaar Magazine]
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