Paris Hilton's Dystopian Motherhood as Metaphor

While Hilton is an exaggerated caricature, her actions are the logical conclusion of what our culture encourages in motherhood and it is NOT hot.

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If you’re a millennial you know who Paris Hilton is. She’s epitome of the millennial low rise, bleach blonde, peek-a-boo thong aesthetic. 

For me she represented what I should look like to be “hot” in high school. To my dismay, with my thick and curly brown hair, curvier body and inability to wear low rise jeans without my body forming a muffin top this was an aesthetic ideal that I could never achieve.

Hilton is many things but chief among them is a savvy business woman--did you know that she’s a middle eastern perfume magnate? She’s also a public relations performance artist who knew that her clueless heiress with a pocket chihuahua and criminal driving record image needed a rebrand. Hilton has always had complete control of any of her creative projects but she loosened the reins a little to participate in a YouTube documentary that detailed her traumatic experiences in hellish reformatories. The documentary has racked up 76 million views and successfully added a level of depth to a woman who was typically considered a pop culture punchline.

Promo Shot for ‘Paris in Love’

The rebrand continues in her Paris in Love reality show which chronicles her marriage and using a surrogate to have a baby. After binging TOO many soul-shredding episodes of the show I can finally say I have something now in 2023 that Paris Hilton does not have: the knowledge that pregnancy, birth and motherhood is a transformative, spiritual journey that forces you into the deepest, most painful personal development journey of your life—and there’s no buying your way out of that. 

Hilton’s journey into motherhood is a modern dystopian horror story that’s over-the-top with it’s details but the baseline theme of Hilton’s behavior reflects the disconnected way so many women approach motherhood today. Paris Hilton as Mother is a macrocosm. 

Hilton announced that her first son, Phoenix was born via surrogate in January of 2023 and a second baby, her daughter, London, came 11 months later--that’s two babies, from two different surrogates, in less than one year. That means Hilton rented the bodies of two women at the same time--more on that later. 

I found myself physically recoiling watching the footage of Hilton’s baby being wheeled in immediately after being born. All I could think about was the surrogate mother, sitting there bleeding and leaking with empty arms.