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2022 was about women losing their voices in pop culture, trumped by men trying to tell their stories for them, a la Blonde and Pam & Tommy. 2023 is different, it’s all about wronged women taking back their power. Already, we’ve gotten to see and read Pamela Anderson’s side of the story, showing fans how it all really went down and that she’s much more than Hollywood gave her credit for. Now, Paris Hilton is taking her turn!
In the early 2000s, Hilton was known as a party girl, the iconic “dumb blonde” trope people would turn to. Even today, people call back to her days in her early 20s, thinking she was just that. However, she’s a businesswoman with a billion-dollar empire under her belt, an impressive DJ and entertaining career, a mother, and above all else, a survivor.
Back in 2020, we got to see a new, more vulnerable side of her with The Real Story of Paris Hilton | This Is Paris YouTube documentary, and now, fans get an even closer glimpse with the release of her memoir entitled Paris: The Memoir.
Set to be released on March 14, Hilton is taking fans on her life’s journey, from childhood to her meteoric rise to fame, and how she was able to survive such perils with class, dignity, and that iconic sass.
Below, here’s every detail we’ve learned so far from Hilton’s long-awaited memoir.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, you should call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, The Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386, or reach Crisis Text Line by texting “START” to 741741. You can also head to your nearest emergency room or call 911.
Warning: This post contains descriptions of sexual violence.
She Was Pressured to Make That Sex Tape
Back in 2003, a sex tape was released with Paris Hilton and ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon. In her memoir, she details how dark that incident really was.
“He kept pushing,” she said. “He told me if I wouldn’t do it, he could easily find someone who would, and that was the worst thing I could think of — to be dumped by this grown man because I was a stupid kid who didn’t know how to play grown-up games.” She added the extra tragic detail that she used alcohol and Quaaludes to calm down, “I needed to prove something to him and to myself, so I got hammered, and I did it.”
She Read This Troubled Star’s Memoir for Guidance
Paris Hilton looks up to Marilyn Monroe, revealing ahead of the memoir’s release that she read Monroe’s memoir titled My Story while working on her own (and she related to it so much that she started to cry).
This Changed Her Life
Along with being a DJ, reality star, business mogul, and name behind an empire, Paris Hilton is a huge adovate against child abuse — saying “advocacy saved my life.”
She Had an Abortion at 22
Ahead of her memoir’s release, she penned in an essay for TIME about an abortion she had at 22. In the essay, she said: “It all came crashing down when I realized I was pregnant at 22. It was like waking up on the ledge outside a 40th-floor window. I was terrified and heartsick. The hormones sent my ADHD symptoms spiraling. Everything I knew about myself was at war with everything I’d been raised to believe about abortion. No one can ever know how hard it is to face this impossible choice unless she’s faced it herself.”
She Helped Sneak This Teenage Kardashian into a Club
In an excerpt, Paris Hilton revealed she tried to sneak in Khloe Kardashian and younger sister Nicky Hilton Rothschild into a former L.A. club. “One night I tried to smuggle my sister Nicky, our cousin Farrah and our friend Khloé Kardashian into Bar One. Khloé and Farrah were little middle-school girls, so I did Khloé up with full makeup, a long red wig and a floppy black hat,” she said. “I told her, ‘If anyone asks, your name is Betsey Johnson.'”
She Gave Herself an Alter Ego to Survive School
To survive the hell that was her schooling experience, Paris Hilton remembers she made an elaborate alter ego for herself to stay strong. Named “Amber Taylor,” Amber, Paris explained her alter ego in her memoir, saying she was “more than a disguise; Amber was a totally different person. [She was] “sassy and smart” and wore mostly black, baggy skater clothes.
She Revealed Who Inspired Her Alter Ego’s Nickname
If you’re wondering why Paris Hilton chose the name “Amber Taylor” for her alter ago, it’s simple: it’s a blend of Amber Valletta and Niki Taylor.
She Planned Multiple Elaborate Escapes from Boarding School
A big part of Paris Hilton’s memoir is talking about the multiple attempts she made to escape the alleged horrendous conditions of the boarding school. She said it “wasn’t a lockdown, but it was surrounded by a tall fence.” That didn’t deter her because she climbed fences a lot as a child “to rescue a stray Frisbee or just because it was fun.” She added she “scaled chain-link barriers around urban rave venues and wrought-iron gates at a friend’s house. I can hop a fence.”
She Called This ‘Real Housewives of Beverley Hills Alum’ for Rescue
During one of her escapes, she ducked through a toilet window and rushed over to a pay phone to call her aunt, Real Housewives of Beverley Hills alum Kyle Richards for help. She refused. “Aunt Kyle was in her twenties when this happened. Not much older than me. We’ve never talked about it, but looking at it from her perspective, how would she not call my mom? Her big sister. My parents did what you’re supposed to do when your kid disappears – they called the police,” she said.
She Details What Happened at Provo Canyon
We can expect Hilton to “go into depth about what happened to me at Provo Canyon School and being there and experiencing that trauma, and being told by the staff in these places that I would never amount to anything.”
The Conditions of Her Solitary Confinement
At Provo Canyon, she found herself in solitary confinement when she refused to take mystery pills. “When I was found out they put me in Obs, a cinder-block chamber about the size of a restroom stall. There was nothing in there except a bucket and a roll of toilet paper near a drain hole. I saw blood and faeces smeared on the wall. It was freezing cold, as frigid as a meat locker. They took your underwear and bra so you couldn’t use them to kill yourself. I don’t remember having anything on that first time,” she said in an exclusive excerpt from the Sunday Tmes.
She Feels Like This Was ‘Robbed’ From Her Growth
In another excerpt from the Sunday Times, Paris Hilton reveals she believes a lot was robbed from her teenage years. “Maths got robbed from me, along with geography, algebra, socialisation, healthy flirtation, how to conduct my body and value my soul. Everything a kid is supposed to get from high school – homecoming, prom, the whole Brat Pack sizzle reel – I got screwed out of all that,” she said. “My education was how to scrub toilets and haul rocks, how to fight for my sanity, how to hurt people before they had a chance to hurt me. I was great at all that. Algebra, not so much.”
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