Admit it - she's got into your head

Paris's breathy mannerisms and 'oh-so-sweet' persona are designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I called home the other day. "I'm covering Paris Hilton," I told my brother. "I hate that girl!" he replied, and passed the phone to my mother. "I'm covering Paris Hilton," I told her. "I hate that girl!" she echoed.

That's the reaction I've been getting ever since Hilton, the hotel heiress, reality TV starlet and poster girl for Hollywood debauchery, touched down in Dubai last Tuesday.

Countless irate readers have phoned me directly to complain about Hilton's picture on the front page of Gulf News. She is not a fit role model. We're making her out to be a goddess of some kind, they say, and she doesn't deserve our attention.

The rage she brings out in people is to me, as a journalist, fascinating. She infuriates you. Her lifestyle sickens you. Her lack is the source of conversations around watercoolers, at bus stops and in dentists' waiting rooms.

But what charges can we really lay at her sparkly pink door?

That she's born rich? There's one born every minute. What sets Hilton apart is that, unlike the millions of other rich kids we're surrounded by everyday, she's done something other than shop her life away.

At the age of 28, she is the head of a global brand name, and makes about $7 million of her own money every year, from perfume sales, reality shows and personal appearances. She didn't ride on her relatives' coattails into a high-powered position in the hotel industry, as so many other offspring of business dynasties do (hello, Ivanka Trump!): Hilton created an industry of her own.

It's an industry for which she's truly abhorred, however. While society girls have been pointlessly celebrated throughout history, Hilton bottled that questionable adoration and sold it, turning the notoriety from an unfortunate starring role in a home sex tape into global appeal. Where other girls would have hidden their faces, she put hers everywhere, fearlessly - some would say shamelessly - asking the world: "Can you now live without knowing who I am?"

The world answered no, of course, and Hilton's success is that she can now sell tacky handbags and fragrances to teenage girls, club night appearances to their older brothers and glossy magazines to their mothers. She's not famous for being famous; she's famous because she's deftly made sure that everyone cares what she does, even if it's to vilify her for it afterwards.

That makes her figurehead of a cult of celebrity that now dominates magazine racks and blogs. By willingly opening up her private life, she tapped into an unquenchable public desire to see inside celebrities' closets, medicine cabinets and psychiatrists' offices. She set new standards in celebrity news coverage: if we know so much about Paris Hilton's life, why can't we know about Madonna's, and Tom Cruise's and Princess Diana's?

Gossip is not measured in tame little columns anymore; it's gauged in Tweets, videos and blog posts, updated by the minute. Who's to blame? The gossip addicts, whose desire for more intimate and shocking details seems unstoppable, or Hilton, who opened that Pandora's Box and continues to feed it? The answer here is: if you make it, people will buy it.

Can anyone who has created - and dominated - such an industry really be called stupid, then? I firmly believe that Hilton's not the airhead blonde she's believed to be. If she looks and acts that way, it's almost certainly because that's how she wants you to perceive her.

A week of watching her film her TV show here in Dubai has convinced me that her pointless catchphrases ('Huge' has replaced 'that's hot', by the way), breathy mannerisms and constant smile are a carefully crafted persona, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator and generate yet more copy. Stupid sells. Who gets more column inches: the brainy, beautiful and talented Natalie Portman, or Britney Spears, who always manages to surprise the world with yet another ridiculous lifestyle choice?

I'm not asking you to like Paris Hilton - that would be a stretch since we don't even know who the real Hilton is. But the next time you begin to say you hate, take a second to ask if that's not exactly what she wants you to do. She's got herself into your head, and you've got to respect her for that.

I fully agree with you, lets not judge her on how she acted in public, simply because she is just true to herself and her lifestyle and upbringing is different from us. And even we like it or not.. she rocks! and an icon to the industry
Connie
Dubai,UAE
Posted: June 26, 2009, 12:04