Sisters are doin' it for themselves
27th January, 2007
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Paris Hilton: skanky, overexposed, talentless ho, or perceptive young woman channelling the zeitgeist with an underappreciated degree of irony and self-awareness. Think you don't want your daughter to grow up to be a decorative trollop like Paris? There are worse things that could happen - she could grow up to be like Janette Howard. At least people want to sit next to Paris at charity dinners.
Here's the thing about Paris: she is nothing more than a symbol of the times. The fact that she has no obvious career is neither particularly 2007 nor unheard of in celebrity blonde circles. But the fact that she is about as famous as it is possible to be for no apparent reason - and has remained famous for more than a minute - is very 2007. In a world where my generation will never have fixed careers and where the medium will be the message (which is a fancy way of saying cool stuff is going to get sexier every year until we reach a point where even the iPod's going to look under-designed), a good-looking woman addicted to exhibitionism for profit is not be sneered at. Paris Hilton is exactly what the world is going to be like - she's what a significant part of the world already is like. And if those crusty old farts want to sit around and criticise the girl for not reading books and for thinking it's important to look pretty, then they should pack themselves off to the chemist for colostomy bags and go check in somewhere with dribble cups. Paris - and all her lookalike, act-alike mates - are doing one thing everyone should be at ease with: they are doing it for themselves. They may be throwing themselves under every billionaire within reach and may (or may not) spend most of their semi-dressed time off their faces and/or bitterly hungover, but they are more or less running their own lives: just what feminists wanted for them. Women of 25 do drink too much, do smoke nefarious substances, do sleep around, do exhibit odd taste in clothes, do shriek, do love having their pictures taken and do love to be loved. Paris hasn't invented those things and she hasn't suddenly made them more acceptable. (Although they should be. Single people have a duty to live it up.) Women of a certain age with a certain level of education like to sneer at poor Paris's intellect which, they assume, is deficient. Get some perspective, ladies: Paris picks up first-class air tickets and $100,000 just for fronting up to promotional parties, which sounds pretty smart to me. Sure beats the earlybird flight special and onion dip. If she's still young enough to feel comfortable being photographed in a string bikini, then more power to her. Those pictures will do much to comfort her in middle age. We can snobbishly pretend that looks don't matter but they damn well do and always have. You can spend a lifetime teaching your daughter that it's not important to look pretty but study after study shows that the best jobs, marital partners, courtroom verdicts and salaries go to good-looking people. If Paris understands all that, she's not totally stupid. There's all the time in the world to be sober and sensible and well-mannered. You really get to play up only when you're young, single and arrogant. If Paris Hilton has reminded the world that a young woman misbehaving can be an attractive, amusing, empowering phenomenon, then I'm all for her. But she doesn't have to be turned into some kind of feminist statement. She just has to enjoy her own life. And it looks like she does. Good luck to her. I'm just popping off to fill a colostomy bag with vodka and see if my wife wants to fool around before it's time for our afternoon naps. |
