Can we learn things from Paris Hilton?

For one, her sex tape was titled “1 night in Paris,” and, as someone who spends an inordinate amount of her time here at Hopkins studying poetry, I feel I am qualified to say that this is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read.

Unfortunately I have word minimum I have to meet, otherwise I would end the column with that knowledge. Thankfully, however, there is plenty more to learn about Paris Hilton.

When you Google her, for example, you get one of three types of results. You get the expected articles talking about her style or her dress at Paris fashion week or her most recent feud with “other famous person you are supposed to care about even though they aren’t Paris Hilton.” You also get the long, scholarly articles and novels entitled things like, “Female Chauvinistic Pigs: The rise of raunch culture” that blame Hilton for teenage sex, the rise of media culture and pornography. Then there’s the third kind which will probably disappear after it stops being November in 2016, questioning her friendship status with Donald Trump.

It seems weird to me how much blame there is ready for Hilton to take on. People want to lambast her for doing nothing while simultaneously blaming her for belly button rings, divorce and other terrible vices of the 21st century. As an icon for the early 2000s she seems to represent a move away from “wholesome” values to many and a move into the immorality of being young, rich and famous. Yet, there’s something impressive about how she’s taken this image and turned it into a brand as well as a lot of money.

In a Forbes interview with the heiress, she revealed that she had plans for how her 45 stores and $2 billion fragrance industry is going to grow with her as she gets older, fully aware of the fact that her party girl image is not going to last much past her ability to pull all-nighters.

It’s important to note how much of a head start Paris Hilton had when she was creating her said empire. She wasn’t exactly pulling herself up from her bootstraps. Rather, it was like she had servants to hold bootstraps for her.

So, perhaps her success is not so impressive, but I do know that I was certainly not reaching out to Donald Trump to join his new modelling agency at 15, nor was I trying to start my own line of perfume at 16. So maybe there’s something more to the woman than the ditzy blonde she portrayed on TV for so many years.

Whether you think her success is impressive or not, you have to admit that it does raise some interesting questions in the golden age of reality TV, where even our presidents can’t come untainted by it.

While I am not the first to speculate about the veracity of the shows that Americans love so much or how ironic the name is, I think that a retrospective look at Paris Hilton’s rise to fame shows that the people who make up our favorite programming seem to know how much they get from being stupid or mean or funny in a way that can make the average American feel better about themselves. So think about that the next time you turn on Keeping up with the Kardashians.