The Reluctant Whore

Paris Hilton’s star is fading fast. The Simple Life has been cancelled after 5 seasons, this week’s reigning LA socialite import Posh Beckham has publicly rejected her after Hilton attempted a strategic alliance, and it was just reported that Conrad Hilton is finally so disgusted with her behavior overall that he’s cut her out of the Hilton will. Still, the endless self absorbed narcissism and entitlement had to explode at some point.

What went wrong? She was supposed to go into jail and then come out an even bigger, more omnivorous celebubeast and instead she’s being slowly relegated to the beach by herself with her latest dog.

Paris’ cultural power was and, ok…still essentially is, entirely centered around her body and ability to spend money without responsibility. There’s nothing more to it. She represents what people want most in America: to be sexually attractive, able to indulge without recompense and the ability to feel nothing painful.

It’s not that she has lost those two factors and therefore she lost all her power, it’s that she infused her persona with some level of emotional depth and potential intellectual capability and the public don’t like that at all. What they liked or still sort of like in Paris was her lack of angst, her no-limits lifestyle and her generic, completely generic sexual appeal. Those are simple distractions and can’t be muddied with human depth. Her behavior surrounding jail including her screams for her mother while being carted off to prison coupled with the revelation of apparent mental illness made her unpleasantly real and as such the public have no room for her.

Jan Carl interviewed her the other day on Entertainment Tonight and Paris explained in crippling, coma inducing, listed detail the extent to which she likes other things like cooking and wants to have a son. She used that soft, lethargic tone that is great for two word soundbytes like, “that’s hot” because it sounds like a phone sex worker’s voice; a one dimensional character that exists entirely to represent packaged desire. Even the hideously fake and earnest Jan Carl had to go to war like battlestations with herself to maintain the illusion of interest in what Paris was saying and for that to happen means something is desperately difficult to bear.

Although, when you think about it, if ET is on the publicity trail with Paris Hilton then she must be rating well enough. ET doesn’t go near anything that isn’t a shoe-in in terms of ratings so technically, she must still have some celeb clout in her weary painted carcass. But then, she probably just has electricity being forced through her body at all times so she can operate, perhaps she’s been dead this whole time and we never noticed. [source]