In November 2003, after we had filmed the first season of The Simple Life and before it premiered, I was living my best life. The show started getting tons of great press. My co-star Nicole Richie and I were working it, showing up, doing interviews. I was out clubbing almost every night, posing for the paparazzi, talking to everyone about this crazy, wonderful show about to come out, promising everyone that they’d be blown away. I shuttled between New York and L.A., working the red carpet at premieres and award shows, and wherever I went, the growing army of paparazzi followed. I was having a wild-child moment, and it was sort of glorious.

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.

Luckily, I wasn’t fully alone. At the time, I had been dating a guy named Jason Shaw for two years. I had first seen him on the curb in front of the Four Seasons in L.A., waiting for valet parking, and recognized him from a towering Tommy Hilfiger billboard that featured him stretched out in his underwear in Times Square. He was a lovely, down-to-earth guy. He had a degree in history. He bought a house on Kings Road where we could live together… But I knew I wasn’t in the right place to make any sort of commitment. It had nothing to do with him or a baby. I just wasn’t capable of being honest or loyal or whole. After suffering abuse at Provo Canyon School and three other programs within the “troubled teen” industry network, I was damaged in ways I couldn’t tell him about, and the fact that I never confided in him about my past—that says it all, doesn’t it? Secrets are corrosive. They destroy anything you try to layer over them.

Choosing to have an abortion can be an intensely private agony that’s impossible to explain. The only reason I’m talking about it now is that so many women are facing it, and they feel so alone and judged and abandoned. I want them to know that they’re not alone, and they don’t owe anyone an explanation. When there is no right way—all that’s left is what is. What you know you have to do. And you do it, even though it breaks your heart.

Over the years, I’ve looked back on all this with sorrow, even though I know I made the right choice. In my loneliest moments, I’ve romanticized that time in my life and tortured myself with melodrama—thoughts like, What if I killed my Paris?—but the fact is, there was no happy little family at stake. That was not going to happen. Trying to continue that pregnancy with the physical and emotional issues I was dealing with at the time would have been a train wreck for everyone involved. At that moment, I was in no way capable of being a mother. Denying that would have jeopardized the forever family I hoped to have in the future, at a time when I was healthy and healed.

Until I met Carter, who would become my husband, I wasn’t totally convinced that forever was a thing for me.

With Carter, for the first time in my life, I began a relationship on a foundation of full disclosure. I made a connection that didn’t include separate corners for carefully kept secrets. We were honest with each other. Crazy concept, right? First you own it. Then you can share it.

We’re now a comfortable married couple. We love our Saturday mornings when we go to the farmers’ market for fresh eggs, fruit, and veggies, which we haul home so I can cook an elaborate brunch, and then we sit there and eat and eat and talk about exquisitely nerdy things like cross-collateralization and negative pickup. We laugh a lot and take time to wonder and be grateful. We love our work, our homes, our jobs, and we adore our dogs.

And we’ve started a family—on our own terms, because we were both ready to be parents. That doesn’t mean it was easy. I’ve always wanted twins: a boy and a girl. “It’s possible,” our doctor said. “In a perfect world…” If only my world were as perfect as it looks. For so many people, having babies is like plug and play, right? That’s how it seems, anyway. And when you want a baby, it seems like everyone around you is getting pregnant. It sucks, but I’m not alone in this either. There are so many young women at the fertility doctor’s office, so many families waiting to happen.

That’s what IVF is all about. Possibility. Hope. It’s hard, but you’re willing to go through anything to find your heart’s desire.

Month after month of injections, several egg-harvesting procedures, more IVF injections, new ADHD meds, my natural state of chaos—it was a lot. The shots are painful. At times, I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to confront the fact that my mind and body had never fully healed—and probably never will fully heal—from the trauma I went through as a teenager. But after two years, we finally welcomed our son, Phoenix Barron Hilton Reum, in January via surrogacy. He is my everything, the child I was always meant to raise.

I know I wouldn’t have this life if I hadn’t made that difficult choice in my early 20s. Women need to control their reproductive destiny. We need to know ourselves, trust ourselves, and know what’s right for us—and when—and stay in the driver’s seat.

Source: time.com

Paris Hilton is standing next to me wearing a black Alice + Olivia pleated mini skirt and top with an embroidered collar, Louboutin boots with pearl studded heels, black Prada bucket hat, sunglasses and phone case around her neck, leaving voice notes for her Uber driver. He’s mistakenly arrived at The Beverly Hilton hotel to collect her, as opposed to the Waldorf Astoria, where we’ve just spent the afternoon together. As far as I can tell, the Uber driver has no clue that the passenger issuing him directions is, in fact, the most famous member of the Hilton hotel dynasty. It’s the voice; several octanes deeper when off-duty, compared to Paris Hilton’s ‘on duty’ soft, coquettish, baby voice. It’s quite extraordinary to witness this vocal dichotomy IRL.

I tell Paris I’m surprised that there’s no chauffeur waiting, delivering one of her fleet of supercars (including a Barbie pink Bentley and an iridescent holographic BMW i8 Roadster with butterfly wings.) “Oh, I don’t drive those very often,” she replies (in the deep voice). “Getting an Uber is much easier.”

Paris’s low-key mode of transport is a surprise, for sure. But it is just one of the many, much more significant and startling things that I discover during my two hours with the 42-year-old world-famous icon of pop culture. Afterwards, I think how incredibly unbridled and honest Paris was, opening up for the first time about many dark elements of her past. But then the following week, I discover – along with the rest of the world – that she was keeping a massive, life-changing secret, more on which later.

Many of us grew up with Paris on our screens, but for those who think they know Paris Hilton, the forthcoming publication of Paris The Memoir on March 14 is about to blow everything out the water. It’s one of the best celebrity biographies I’ve ever read; the revelations within it are shocking, moving and deeply personal.

Paris opens up for the first time about her experiences of sexual assault and abuse, including being groomed by one of her teachers and a narrow escape from an aggressive encounter with Harvey Weinstein. It really does offer a different context to her life and past behaviours.

It also reveals Paris as funny, self-aware and surprisingly profound, while offering a fascinating insight into celebrity culture, which she has undoubtedly helped define for the last two decades.

Paris Whitney Hilton was born in New York City on February 17, 1981, the first child of property developer Rick and former child actress Kathy, and the great-granddaughter of legendary hotel magnate Conrad Hilton. Her childhood was one of extraordinary privilege as she and her three siblings – sister Nicky and brothers Barron and Conrad – divided their time between Bel Air and Park Avenue. When Paris was growing up, she wanted to be a vet and was a tomboy who had a collection of pet ferrets and a goat. “I didn’t even like pink”, she tells me.

As the woman whose name became universal shorthand for blonde, spoiled and rich in the early noughties, thanks to her hit reality TV show The Simple Life – which spawned the omnipotent cult of reality TV (never forget Kim Kardashian was once Paris’s assistant) and whose ‘That’s hot’ catchphrase is as famous as she was for being a “hot mess” in her twenties – it may be surprising to hear that Paris’s book tells a different story: one of female empowerment and survival.

“I’m not a dumb blonde, I’m just very good at pretending to be one,” she tells me. “The real me is someone who is strong and resilient, brave, smart and fun.”

A dark, secret past
Paris arrives for our interview entirely on her own, bar Ether, her miniature white Pomeranian, who is literally the size of a guinea pig. She’s giving Cher from Clueless meets Audrey Hepburn vibes and it’s easy to see why she’s become a Y2K fashion icon to Gen-Z on TikTok – and why Donatella Versace chose her to close her show in Milan at Fashion Week last September.

In the Diptyque-scented serenity of the white marbled lobby, the only thing belying the fact that this tall, willowy blonde is indeed Paris Hilton, is her bubblegum-pink dog carrier – emblazoned with her catchphrase, ‘Loves It’ – from her luxury pet accessories range. (Yours, or rather your pooch’s, for just $750.)

Paris admits she is nervous about the interview, and her hands are visibly shaking as she struggles to get the key card to work in the elevator. Other guests are starting to twig and selfies are rapidly requested, to which the woman who invented the selfie, politely obliges (cue on-duty baby voice.)

We arrive in a suite high above Beverly Hills and the room is filled with pink roses, Diet Coke, herbal teas, bowls of crisps and a plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cut into circles, no crusts. “I just love kids’ food,” she says, peeling back one of the sandwiches to layer on more jelly as she settles on the sofa next to me, Ether in between us.

Full interview: glamourmagazine.co.uk

On the day her son was born, Paris Hilton put on a brunette wig and a hoodie and checked into a hospital under a different name. Her platinum-blond hair is one of her many calling cards, and it felt imperative that she go unnoticed. Her baby’s impending existence was, at that point, a secret to the rest of the world, known only to Hilton, her husband, Carter Reum, and their surrogate. Even their immediate families would not find out until just before she announced his arrival on Instagram.

“My entire life has been so public,” Hilton says over the phone in late January, hovering outside of the baby’s nursery and speaking quietly while he naps. “I’ve never had anything for myself. We decided that we wanted to have this whole experience to ourselves.”

Once he’d been cleared to leave the hospital, she and Reum brought their son home, to the house they recently bought in Beverly Hills. For two full days, they were truly alone (they’d told their staff the house was being painted), enjoying the relative quiet of life with a newborn—getting used to his sleeping and feeding schedules and singing him lullabies. (Hilton was partial to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” as well as her 2006 hit, “Stars Are Blind.” “The acoustic version,” she clarifies.) Then, when it seemed like the news was about to come out on its own, they broke the spell and announced they’d become parents.

Even with a surrogate, a pregnancy is a big secret to keep. But Hilton is used to keeping parts of her life hidden. In the 2020 documentary This Is Paris, she came forward for the first time about the abuse she suffered in her adolescence, after her parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton, shipped her off to a series of boarding schools that promised to reform troubled teens. She has since become a prominent advocate for shutting down the so-called troubled-teen industry; in 2021, she supported a bill to further regulate the schools in Utah, and she is now pushing for federal reform.

It was the start of a transformative three years for Hilton. The entrepreneur, reality-television star, DJ, performer, perfumer, model, and socialite helped invent a certain kind of vacuous fame in the early aughts, when she was mostly famous for her last name, going to parties, being hot, and saying “That’s hot,” but at 42, the endlessly iterative star has traded playing Paris qua Paris for a more authentic, transparent version of herself. Her memoir, Paris: The Memoir, out this month, puts Hilton squarely in charge of her own cultural recontextualization—“How do we not see that the treatment of It Girls translates to the treatment of all girls in our culture?” she writes at one point, sounding Elle Woodsian—and plunges into darker, shocking details from her high school years. It’s the final step in her unburdening and all of the attendant change that has come with it, including marriage, motherhood, and a fundamental shift in her priorities. “Advocacy,” she writes in Paris, “saved my life.”

Hilton’s own childhood ended abruptly, violently. One could understand why she’d want to ensure her son’s welcome into this world felt sacred and safe. “I want to protect him and to be with him every second,” she says. “You have this mother instinct that kicks in, which I’ve never had before. I feel so complete now.”

It’s well documented that Hilton has two distinct voices. One is her regular, private speaking voice, which is low toned and almost sonorous; the other is the voice she uses for the public-facing character of Paris Hilton, which is higher pitched and coquettish, the real-life Valley Girl standard. In a mid-2000s clip that went viral on TikTok, where Hilton has flourished thanks to a new Gen Z fan base, Hilton bellows to the driver of a waiting car to wait “two minutes.” When an awaiting paparazzo asks how she’s doing, she transforms midstep: “Goooood,” she purrs.

In Paris, Hilton describes the character as “my steel-plated armor,” a “dumb blonde with a sweet but sassy edge”: “I made sure I never had a quiet moment to figure out who I was without her. I was afraid of that moment because I didn’t know what I’d find.” Dropping the act would mean navigating, and overseeing, yet another public reconstruction of herself.

Full interview: harpersbazaar.com