May 31 2007: Paris Hilton: Youth Celebrity
”Youth celebrities express nothing other than the structure of international media systems.” Do you agree? In your answer, you should identify a media figure admired by young people, and outline the structural and cultural factors explaining his or her emergence as an object of desire.
The status of celebrity is essentially manufactured by the different factors which make up today’s society - it is a product of the people’s desires and interests, a result of the political environment of our time, and can be considered the physical manifestation of the way society sees themselves, or wants to see themselves. With the variety of media these days (everything from television, radio, print, Internet, etc.), it goes without saying that celebrities can transcend fame initially found in a specific medium - they may make their fame through one medium, but they can, and most likely, will cross over into another medium.
Paris Hilton is an example of such a celebrity. Initially made famous in the Page Six society pages of newspapers as a wealthy heiress, she transcended her initial fame and became an infamous Internet celebrity when a private homemade sex video (”One Night In Paris”) with a former boyfriend, Rick Saloman, became public. Overnight, she was no longer “the Hilton heiress”. She was quite simply, Paris, famous for being famous. Managing to manipulate this fame into a recording contract, book deals, a perfume line, jewellery lines, fashion designing, a nightclub chain, an acting and modelling career, Paris Hilton has become the quintessential celebrity of the twentieth-century - multifaceted, and embodying the type of lifestyle that society wishes they could have. She is what Levy (2005:30) calls our society’s “breathing embodiment of our current, prurient, collective fixations - blondeness, hotness, richness, anti-intellectualism”. Taking into account Henry’s (1990) succinct summary of what it takes to be a celebrity these days in modern society – anyone “with about $100,000 to squander by adopting the right charities, being photographed at the right spots, and hiring public-relations counsellors who now serve everybody from models and movie stars to lawyers and landlords”, is it any wonder that a physically attractive heiress with millions to her name was able to become a celebrity with every intention of taking her ‘brand’ worldwide?
As Hilton herself has stated (Hilton & Ginsberg, 2004:102), “there’s no reason I can’t do more than one thing. It’s all about taking charge and branding yourself.” Paris Hilton is a brand name in herself - much like the Barbie doll, a cultural icon that Hilton has repeatedly mentioned as one of her idols (Hilton et. al, 2004). When one considers Rogers’s (1999) statements regarding the status of Barbie as a cultural icon in the modern world, and how Barbie relates to people’s lives, one can almost see the similarities to Hilton’s role in society. As one hears of “Barbie’s appeal lies significantly in what she has… (she) is thus an icon not only of consumerism, but of materialism,” (Rogers, 1999:72), one can’t help but think of Hilton, an heiress whose flamboyant jet-setting lifestyle reeks of the stench of materialism. As Hilton herself proudly says, “Never wear the same thing twice” (Hilton et al. 2004:12) – surely having the finances to afford a different outfit every day is possibly the epitome of materialism and consumerism. Society these days is nothing if not a consumer society - social status is measured not in personality and personal worth, but rather in what a person owns, how much they earn, where they live, here they go on holiday (Barber, 2007). Hilton is the best representative of how society wants to live, of what society wants to own.
Gamson’s (1994) chapter on celebrity in the late twentieth century entitled ”The Name and the Product”, and Bonner et. al’s (2000) chapter on “Managing The Media” explains in further detail exactly how a person such as Paris Hilton is able to make their fame. Essentially, bad publicity is good publicity: visibility is all-important, and it matters not what you’re famous for, as long as you’re famous. Paris is famous amongst the world’s paparazzi as someone who “happily obliges them wherever she goes, and they snap away, selling the resulting pictures to a growing number of celebrity weeklies” (Smith, 2005: 152). As an example, Paris Hilton may have initially become internationally famous for the “1 Night in Paris” sex tape scandal (Smith, 2005:156), but as Gamson (1994:45) advises, a shrewd business manager has since ensured that Hilton has “filled a niche market”, where there was previously a shortage for a particular type of image. People were looking for someone like Hilton - someone who, as Naomi Wolf says is “the perfect Bush-era heroine, because she’s all style and no content” (Smith, 2005). In a time of global warfare and strife, living in an era of terror and fear, it’s no wonder that society is infatuated with Hilton, whose placidity and anti-intellectualism represents a safe and apolitical haven from the turmoil of daily life. Hilton’s well-noted lack of interest in anything vaguely intellectual or thought-stimulating is yet another indicator of where society’s values lie. Despite individual protests against her rising popularity due to her vapidity, the lowest common denominator will always direct where society’s interests lie. For every social commentator’s newspaper editorial condemning Hilton and her fame, there’s a hundred ‘common people’ who love Hilton and everything she stands for.
Leading on from that concept, the self-preoccupation that Hilton is representative of is ever-present in today’s society, a direct result of the turmoil in the world. What better way to put all that unrest behind you but by focusing on number one? As Hilton says, “Put yourself on your own pedestal, and then everyone else will too. Always act like you’re on camera, and the spotlight’s on you. Always behave like you are the centre of attention. Always act like you’re wearing an invisible crown” (Hilton, 2004: 6-7) – essentially, put yourself first. Be self-centred. You are what’s important in your life. Again, as Naomi Wolf says, “She’s like Muzak: ‘It’s all right. What’s the big deal? Doesn’t matter if people are killing people in your name. Just go to the mall’,” (Smith, 2005:157). It is materialism and self-centredness at its best – just forget about your troubles and shop and party your worries away like Hilton does.
Physically, Hilton embodies what Synnott (1993) calls the “plastic body” - blonde, thin, attractive, her body represents many different things to different members of her audience; it can be “moulded and selected at need or whim”. She is essentially an empty signifier – any concept or ideal can be projected onto her. With the rise of raunch culture in recent years (embodied in such celebrities as the Pussycat Dolls, Carmen Electra, Christina Aguilera, etc.), Hilton can be seen as “the perfect sexual celebrity for this moment, because our interest is in the appearance of sexiness, not the existence of sexual pleasure” (Levy, 2005:30). Essentially, despite such so-called ‘sexually liberating’ developments in the media such as the television show Sex In The City, females today do not worry about being sexual and in touch with their sexualities. Their attractiveness and worth as females is measured in their ability to primp and pluck oneself into physical ‘perfection’, and their ability to dress oneself in the least possible amount of clothing. Yet, in being so very concerned with being “sexy” and “hot”, females are losing sight of being “sexual”, and are forgetting what it means to be truly in touch with their feminine side. Why be so ‘sexy’ and put male opinions of feminine perfection before what’s truly important for females as a group? Hilton herself has admitted to a reporter “my boyfriends always tell me I’m not sexual. Sexy, but not sexual” (Grigoriadis, 2003).
Hilton is what many teenagers would define as ‘cool’ (Danesi, 1994). If one takes Danesi’s definition of the perception of ‘coolness’, Hilton fits each and every single category perfectly: 1) Use of illegal drugs and substances – Hilton’s hard-partying lifestyle is no secret; 2) Music and dance preferences – Hilton is friends with many popular musicians, and is herself a singer; 3) Strategic use of aggression – her feuds with numerous other starlets are well documented; 4) Dress and physical appearance – she has never been photographed looking anything other than perfectly coiffed and primped; 5) Sexual promiscuity and prowess – her sex videos with various ex-boyfriends are freely available online. Hilton is the representative of what our society desires most as she is essentially the epitome of ‘cool’. Cool is a desirable state of being – everyone wants to be cool (Klein, 2001:69). This concept of ‘coolness’ and ‘popularity’ is especially true in youth settings. The type of high-status female who wields power in social settings is “very slim – like anorexic-looking”, “like poles”, “very bitchy”, “wearing lots of makeup”, “wearing good clothes, always following the trends”. (Currie et. al, 2006:422). Again, as proven in another research study, the youth perception of a ‘cool’ and ‘popular’ female is almost a carbon copy of the public figure known as Paris Hilton. Is it any wonder that her main fan base is the young and youthful?
In conclusion, it can be seen that celebrities such as Paris Hilton transcend the medium which made them into public figures - she has moved from the Page Six society columns of East Coast papers to Internet video fame, to music and movies. Putting it simply, she is the quintessential modern celebrity - famous for being famous. She embodies everything that society wants to see themselves as: fun, frivolous, with an enviable lifestyle. Quite frankly, she has the type of privileged life that society wishes they could have. Hilton herself sums up her appeal best: “I’m a fantasy to a lot of people. They want to think that I have more fun than they do, have fewer problems, wake up looking great, go to sleep looking great, can buy and eat anything in the world I want, and get any hot guy I want….No one wants to think that I have a normal life of problems. They prefer to imagine someone has the Perfect Life, and I guess mine seems like that to a lot of people” (Hilton et. al, 2004: 8).
Bibliography
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