Paris: A Memoir for Young Women in the Age of Influencers

by Paris Hilton

Skin care. Seriously. If you take nothing else from my story, receive this: Skin care is sacred.

The primary disadvantage of ADHD is that people around you are often inconvenienced, weirded out, or hurt by your behavior, so you’re constantly getting judged and punished, which makes you feel like shit. Suicidal ideation is higher in people with ADHD. Self-loathing and self-medication are endemic. If the rest of the world says you’re obnoxious or stupid or just not braining right, loving yourself is an act of rebellion, which is beautiful but exhausting, especially when you’re a little kid. With that needy little kid always inside you, your life becomes an epic quest for love—or whatever feels like love in the moment.

My imagination is infinite, but it takes me to dark places as easily as it takes me toward the light. Dr. Hallowell calls it the Demon, that snake that slithers into everything telling you that if it’s bad you deserve it and if it’s good it won’t last.

There are so many young women who need to hear this story. I don’t want them to learn from my mistakes; I want them to stop hating themselves for mistakes of their own. I want them to laugh and see that they do have a voice and their own brand of intelligence and, girl, fuck fitting in.

Never regret anything, because at one time it was exactly what you wanted. MARILYN MONROE

As you wise up, you realize that all the stupid things you didn’t do—those are the regrets.

True sophistication is the ability to fit in anywhere because you have a broad understanding of and respect for all kinds of people.

An accomplished party girl is a facilitator, a negotiator, a diplomat—she’s the sparkler and the match.

Know your worth, girls. You’re not lucky to be at the party; the party is lucky to have you. Apply as needed to relationships, jobs, and family.

Marilyn Monroe said, “Fear is stupid. So is regret.”

The day Carter and I were married, Wendy said, “Remember, life is a journey with all its ups and downs. Stay true to each other.”

“Work hard and be independent,” she told me. “Don’t let a man tell you your life. You’re a star—the most gorgeous thing on the planet. Men will bow down to you, but you have to know what you want and go for it.”

Language aside, she set a powerful example: Stick up for the ones you love—and love yourself enough to stick up for you.

So, I did what people do when they don’t have the family they need: I made one. That’s a good skill to learn, because pretty much everyone, at some point in life, goes through a phase when they’re estranged from the family they’re born into.

Because shame is dangerous. Poisonous.

That’s how you entrepreneur: Recognize a problem—or create one—and offer your product as the solution.

But she knows the truth: being free and facing the world with all its monsters is better than being safe and leaving your life unlived.

There’s a beautiful moment in the final act, when both fathers understand that the wild and beautiful daughters were never theirs to control. They could only teach by example. They could only love and let go. So they let go.

Here’s what I believe: Your reality is totally up for grabs; if you don’t create your own life, someone else will create something based on their own agenda and project that on you. Don’t let them do it, my loves. Don’t let them tell you that their something is bigger than your everything.

I love creating and consuming content, but it’s possible to lose yourself if you forget that life and images of life are two very different things.

The first step to self-reinvention is inventory. Give yourself credit for everything you’ve got going for you. Whatever’s going against you, figure out how to use it to your advantage.

“Why didn’t you speak up at the time?” and I had no answer for that. That’s one of those questions that shifts blame onto someone who shouldn’t have to own it.

No woman should be shamed for taking care of herself.

If you know in your heart that you’re hot, you are hot, according to the laws of hotness physics.

People grow and change. Healing happens, but damage runs deep.

Papa used to say, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Style goes around and comes around: Spirograph, not Etch-a-Sketch.

Creepy behavior is about the creeper, not the person being creeped on.

STOP FUCKING PRETENDING. It takes too much energy and makes you paranoid.)

I hope the takeaway is this: The future belongs to girls who refuse to do as they’re told. Girl power doesn’t come from being rich or beautiful; it’s a combination of courage, kindness, and laughter.

Secrets are corrosive. Secrets destroy anything you try to layer over them. It’s like using concealer to cover a black eye. You can hide it, but that’s not the same as healing.

One priceless bit of advice my great-grandfather gave my grandfather, and my grandfather gave me: “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal.”

If you ask Elliot Mintz what he does, he says, “I clean up what gets tainted and magnify what glows.”

“If you reach a smaller number of people with real potency and power, they will stay with you forever,” said Elliot.

“Don’t lie. Learn from Clinton and Nixon. You’re better off if you just cop to it and move on.”

The only people who don’t screw up are people who never do anything.

Advocacy work has taught me that “silence means assent”; if you don’t speak up when something is wrong, it’s the same as agreeing with it.

grace is available to all of us if we make it available to each other.

I don’t choose to revisit that which is divisive. I’m only interested in that which is healing.

When I was younger, I thought “rise above it” meant swallowing negative feelings, pretending nothing was happening. That was the way my parents operated, but now I see how buried pain and anger can damage your soul; the only way to resolve it is exposing it to air and sunlight.

Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together. MARILYN MONROE

Social media became the new reality. Selves became selfies. Privacy was commodified. Our collective attention span became ad space.

Don’t waste energy living a life someone else designed for you. Life is one per customer. Let them do theirs. You do yours.

There’s no substitute for hard work. Keep killing it and something will happen. Probably not what you expected, but something.

Celebrate the positives, recognize value in the negatives, and be grateful for both because it all makes you who you are.

Terrible things are terrible. Let’s just acknowledge it. If you found strength, wisdom, or a new way of thinking, that’s awesome, but notice that the strength, wisdom, and new worldview came out of you, which means it was all there inside you to begin with.

The people who hurt you don’t get the last word. You get to tell the story of you, and your story has more power than you can imagine.