What does she represent? A woman whose body was used by men to masturbate over? I don't accept your framing that she's either a victim or a good example. She's not a good example but it is pointless to hate her because that is what the patriarchy wants from us. She's there for us to hate.
Alyx from here did a brilliant post about Paris Hilton, maybe her arguments will persuade you better than mine -
"Forget Paris*
I never thought I’d be doing this. Really. The day I go into bat for Paris Hilton is the day Tony Abbott becomes a pro-choice lesbian agitating for women’s rights, I’d think, while hastily cutting sundry tabloid photographs of the hornbag** heiress into confetti.
Well, Tony Abbott may yet have a sex change and hook up with a bolshie babe, ‘cuz my view of Hilton has softened to the point where I don’t believe she deserves much of the faecal matter flung at her.
If there’s one thing that unites feminists and sexists like nothing else, it’s a big-titted Barbie of few brain cells and questionable talent. The adolescent urge to take these women down a peg, either because they refuse to fuck you (sexists) or because they fucking piss you off (feminists) seems as natural as the drooly chin of the proverbial Pavlovian pooch.
For sexists, who’ve refined ripping on women into an artform over centuries, slut-bashing is just one pastime among many, not unlike arse-grabbing, cat-calling or foetus-fetishizing (take your pick). A beautiful imbecile whose leg-splayed antics are available for popular consumption represents the Holy Grail for these Oxygen Thieves. For a sexist, the name ‘Paris Hilton’ functions as a kind of metonymy for the Two Misogynist Truths: 1) Women=Sex, and 2) That women really are shallow, self-absorbed shopaholics who don’t deserve to be taken seriously.
For feminists, the motives are more obscure, more connected to our politics and the way we’re pitted against one another in a sexist society than our crude joking would suggest. Paris Hilton is everything that a feminist (and any girl who’s not a complete masochist or a Martha Stewart) loathes about patriarchy: A spoilt rich white girl who got famous because of her capitalist Daddy and then augmented said fame by spreading her legs and fellating a pornographer. Add to that the fact that she’s materialistic, vain and thicker than two wooden planks, and you can see why Ms. H is the target of much misdirected feminist fury. Hell, the glamorous sexbot’s blemish-free head seems perpetually plastered by a more-Zen-than-Dopey the Dwarf expression. She’s basically the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with dick-dominated society: A collection of sexist clichés poured into skyscraper heels and sporting a hot-pink handbag and weasel-dog. She’s the repository for our scorn, the feminist’s corporeal waste basket.
“At least sexists are consistent,” a dull-witted but perceptive male friend once told me. “They hate all women indiscriminately. Feminists only hate a certain type of woman.” While there’s a lot that’s omitted by these statements, they’re basically true: Women do hate a certain type of woman, and we hate her because it’s a lot easier to hate another woman than it is to hate the system that created her. The woman in question, whether she’s a Surrendered wife or a garden-variety Jezebel, is the one we all point and jeer at, mainly because she’s visible in a way that patriarchy isn’t; she’s tangible, she’s flesh-and-bone, she exists in the physical world to be poked and prodded and mocked ad nauseum. Sexism has no body, no skin and only exists in the abstract for the patriarchs, who have never experienced it and are hence often blind to its very real consequences. What I’m saying is, no-one can point to sexism and laugh the way we can point at Paris Hilton and laugh, because sexism is a thing, not a person. And even as a symbolic system, sexism functions incredibly effectively, because it employs only the image of the oppressed and keeps the oppressors well out of view.
Let me put it this way: When I say the word ‘sexism’, what do you think of? Do you think of hawt Girls-Gone-Wild in handkerchief tube-tops, gymnastically swinging ‘round poles and waving their waxed pussies just inches from men’s faces? Or maybe you think of Doris Day and June Cleaver types, serving Master Hubby’s dinner for him Like A Good Woman Should. Either way, when I say ‘sexism’, what invariably comes to mind are images of women, not men. Men are the main perps of sexism, yet they’re conspicuously absent from its symbolism, making their privilege invisible and putting the spotlight on the very people who benefit least from the exposure: Women. So the Jezebel is hated in the way that her John isn’t, in the same way that the rape victim is named but her rapist isn’t—to protect male privilege. And so it is with Hilton-bashing.
Despite her many crimes against our politics (and against common sense), I believe that we’re really barking up the wrong tree when we blame Hilton for the so-called failure of feminism, or for the Girls Gone Wild fad, or for the fact that another girl gave our boyfriend head, or whatever. Because it’s not Hilton’s fault. Yeah, ok: She lives a life of insane privilege and could probably buy Africa (the continent) if she really wanted to, but even this privilege isn’t enough to insulate her from the barrage of patriarchal messages that seep into our pores like so much Oil of Olay every fucking minute of the day. And, at the end of that day, Paris Hilton is like anyone else: She laughs, cries, loves, hurts and bleeds. She may wipe her arse with silk sheets, but she still shits like the rest of us.
SEXISM is the enemy, not sheilas. Don’t hate the sheilas for following their obedience training and being rewarded for it with a pat on the head and a warm bed to sleep in. Hate the sexism that reduced those girls to patriarchy’s bitches in the first place. And don’t be afraid to hate sexism, girls, ‘cuz you’d better believe that it hates you.
And every time a left-wing male celebrity—Rove McManus from Rove Live, Peter Berner from Backburner, Wil Anderson from The Glass House—smirkingly reveals yet another ‘Bimbo Hilton Exposé’, what they’re actually revealing is their own misogyny. You don’t need to be a Germaine Greer or an Anne Summers to know that Aussie culture is rife with sheila hatred; indeed, it’s this country’s unofficial favourite sport. And it seems, at least to me, that sheila-hatred often occurs when the woman in question ignores the Australian cultural mandate to make herself smaller so that others can feel bigger (the inverse of Tall Poppy Syndrome, TPS, which could also stand for ‘Tiny Penis Syndrome’) and speaks and behaves and does whatever the fuck she feels like doing, without censoring herself for the benefit of male egos. Shameless self-promotion is a crime in the Great South (Waste)Land, and it’s one Hilton is certainly guilty of.
So pervasive is this hatred for Sheilas Who Don’t Give A Shit that it’s gotten to the point where Rove can spend an entire segment of his show joking about what an idiot Hilton is, and then plug Jemma Jameson’s ‘How To Male Love Like A Porn Star’ book in the follow-up segment. Or that Dave Hughes—the retarded co-host of Wil Anderson with the nasal voice on The Glass House—can joke about how Hilton should rent her head out as a storage compartment for circus animals one minute, and then wax poetic over his porno collection (like he does every other episode—original!) the next. Or that Corinne Grant (a female comedienne) and Mia Freedman (former Cosmo editor, current Media Darling) sit beside one another on The Glass House in a revealing episode where Grant is rebuffed when she tries some sexual innuendo on a male guest (who responds flatly, ‘I’d never do YOU’, to much audience laughter), and said guest then proceeds to proposition Freedman because he clearly found Grant’s take-charge attitude too threatening (after rejecting Grant, he promptly turned to Freedman and said, ‘Now I’d totally do YOU.’ Cue more audience laughter. Later on in the show, this same jerkarse joked about how female comedians ‘just weren’t funny’ and should consider stripping instead. The fact that this guy is a comedian himself may explain his arseholery.)
So Freedman—A woman who’s conventionally attractive, quiet and only willing to speak up when it’s to agree with what the guys say—gives Boy Culture a boner, whereas Grant—Who’s not a great beauty, who’s witty, who’s a wisearse woman direct in thought and action—is enough to make the guys resort to ridicule, her very presence enough to induce impotence in Ockerland.
In a not wholly dissimilar way, left-wing guys don’t have many reasons to like Hilton—unlike Kylie Minogue, she doesn’t feign modesty and naiveté. Unlike Missy Higgins, she doesn’t support trendy dude-driven organisations like the ‘People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.’ Unlike Toni Collette, she doesn’t proclaim her hatred of the Bush Administration from the rooftop of her million-dollar penthouse, or threaten to slit her wrists if John Howard wins the next election (gee, a hot woman who mutilates herself—subversive!) And unlike Elle McPherson, she doesn’t crap on about how much she loves a country (Australia) that means bugger all to her.
But don’t think that these guys hate her because she’s selfish and lacks a political consciousness—nup. They just hate her because she doesn’t do the faux-modest, faux-nice, obligatory pandering to their egos (too wrapped up in her own). And of course, because preteen girls love her. And don’t forget, whatever girls like automatically becomes petty, stupid and Lame. For further examples, see ‘Britney Spears.’
Am I saying that Paris Hilton deserves to be pitied? No. Over the tape incident maybe, but in a world where 60% of people don’t even have access to something as basic as a phone line, the last group of people deserving of pity are the ones who can afford to pamper their pooches by sending them to a fucking Health & Beauty Spa for canines. Am I saying that Hilton is a feminist role model? Come on! Am I saying that she deserves even one fourth of the attention accorded to her by the monopolistic Murdoch Media? Is the Pope a posterchild for Women’s Liberation?
What I am saying is that attaching the ‘slut’ moniker to Hilton ultimately does feminists more harm than good. When a feminist mocks the so-called slutitude of another woman, she gives the misogynists a green light to do the same. She is saying that she doesn’t give a fig about how men talk about women, that blokes can boink anything that moves but sheilas can’t, and that some women really do deserve to be hated for what they are—for what patriarchal society expects them to be. And every time a feminist participates in this Eve Excoriation Exercise, she is reinforcing that same name-the-victim-but-not-the-rapist, shame-the-sheila-but-not-the-bloke mentality that encourages us all to burn the witch while the arsehole who engineered the patriarchal pyrotechnics gets off (literally, in the case of the pornstitution industries) scot-free.
Even if the "Slut!" branding of Hilton wasn’t the sexist and damaging beastie that it is, even if it were wonderful and beautiful and stamped with the Gloria Steinem Seal of Approval—it would still be wrong for us to do it, as women who purport to care about other women. ‘Cuz let’s face it: Female celebrities are often—not always, but a good 96% of the time—pathetically incognisant of the way gender politics work, and of the way the world works in general. I’m pretty sure that when Pamela Anderson bought herself a new rack on credit (celebrities have some kind of cosmetic surgery credit system; like, ‘buy one set of implants, get a botox hit free’) that she wasn’t thinking ‘Man, these babies oughta show those ugly feminist bitches what for!’ Alas, she was probably thinking, ‘These new breasts will provide me with the masculine love and attention that Daddy deprived me of in childhood.’ Enter Tommy Lee. And yeah, that’s pathetic of her, but as I said, you can’t blame a gal for following her obedience training.
If there’s any group of women who do deserve our contempt, it’s women like Christie Hefner and Heidi Fleiss and Mary-Anne Kenworthy. These women consciously profit off selling other women up Merde Creek. They are patriarchy’s lackeys and proud of it. They don’t coin idiotic catchphrases like ‘That’s Hot’ or sell their body parts because they sincerely believe it’s empowering and really don’t know otherwise—they sell other women like property to the highest bidder and they do so with full knowledge of the addiction and trauma and cum-rag status that their human merchandise is reduced to. If anyone deserves a roasting, it’s these Miss Capitalist Piggies here.
But even focusing on these women too much lets the boys off the butcher’s chook. Especially when stupidity and not exploitation is the main crime. For every Paris Hilton, how many Russell Crowes are there? What about Keanu Reeves? Or Sean William Scott? Or Tom Green? Or Dave Hughes? Or the entire cast of the aptly-named Jackass ? What about these dick cheeses—guys who hump dead farm animals and consume 5-kilo bags of salt and set each other’s pubes on fire for kicks? Why do we worship them and put them on a pedestal, when we should really be putting them in a strait jacket? Why is it bad to be a bimbo, but good to be a suicidal show pony with ADD and, apparently, a full frontal lobotomy? Compared to these guys, Hilton is Florence Nightingale.
When I hear a feminist call Paris Hilton a slut, a slag, a slapper or a whore, what I’m really hearing is the sentiments expressed by a woman who’s wearing patriarchal blinders. Said blinders are very easy because momentary bitching about a culturally-approved hate-object precludes action—you don’t actually have to do anything, least of all challenge male power. And that’s the way the boys like it. Put the woman on a pedestal and watch her go down on it. And while this doesn’t appeal for women who value our voices for something other than mouthing patriarchal platitudes, it does no good if feminists use those voices to call Britney Spears a whore—a gift for patriarchy, and truly one of its favourite kind of mouth jobs.
*Title of post derived from a crappy 90’s movie written by, directed by and starring Billy Crystal
**Term used on the Australian television show ‘Kath & Kim.’ Apparently, it means, ‘A really hot babe.’"
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