Painting herself evermore into the generational corner of “millennial icon,” Paris Hilton has found a new and particular way to make herself rather odious to Gen Z types of the Greta Thunberg school of thought regarding waste and extravagance. While her “bit” might have been carried off easily in the George W. Bush era, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for her to justify this vague attempt at Anna Nicole Smith and Lucille Ball in a blender (though it’s something of an insult to Ball to bring her into this). Yet attempt it she does in her latest “reality TV” foray, Cooking With Paris.
Having secured Netflix backing for the project, Paris’ “legitimacy” persists, even if she seems determined to want to undo all the “rebranding” work that was intended with her documentary, This Is Paris. Yet she already negated most of the “progress” made within the narrative. Because at the end of the movie, she’s asked the question, “Can you and ‘the brand’ have a divorce now?” If Cooking With Paris hadn’t answered that question, Paris’ reply certainly does, for she insists, “No. It’d be an expensive divorce.” The director gets a bit harsher with her by countering, “You can’t do this brand forever. You can’t. You’re gonna age out of it.” Paris smiles, “No. I’ll just be like this forever.” Watching Cooking With Paris, one tends to believe her.
From the very moment the first episode, “Breakfast in the Clouds With Kim Kardashian West,” begins, it’s clear Hilton is relying on the gambit that has “built her empire” (even though we all know that being born rich already is what actually built it). It starts with an intro of her overdressed in couture to go shopping at Gelson’s Market. The sort of pink, tutu-inspired dress that looks vomited out of the 80s. In fact, one imagines that a certain wife of Donald Trump could have worn it. Her improvident ways manifest instantaneously as she approaches the cereal aisle and puts a grossly unnecessary amount of boxes—including her beloved Lucky Charms—into the cart. The presence of Kim Kardashian (no longer West) in the episode also speaks to Hilton’s need to rely on old dynamics for “TV gold.” And since Nicole Richie is the only one who seems to have actually moved somewhat past the 00s, Kardashian was the next best thing. Their recent rekindled “friendship” (though it’s more of a frenemyship that functions more easily than the one Paris shared with Lindsay Lohan) has materialized in a few moneymaking endeavors, namely Kim’s line of velour tracksuits for her Skims brand. It’s clear that both have found a “friend” in one another by understanding the business value of appealing to millennial nostalgia together. As a duo.
The first spoken dialogue Paris has caters to her usual “I’m so dumb, I need help” persona as she asks the beleaguered worker at the store, “‘Scuse me, sir? What do chives look like?” Again, because she’s said so many times at this point that this is all an “act,” her ruse is particularly stale. In a different era, it might have still been “entertaining.” You know, to watch “the help” have to endure the vacuousness of rich people who rely on them despite getting paid nothing even remotely comparable to do so. In the present, it’s not comestible. And Kardashian’s presence doesn’t do anything to add to the necessary message of “parsimony” in our society going forward as the two proceed to reminisce about their stay at Jade Jagger’s in Ibiza.
On that note, Kim is sure to compliment Paris on how good she looks for someone who partied so hard throughout her life (more passive aggressive frenemy repartee). Paris chuckles, “I’m an alien.” Or she has the dough required to stay looking fresh. Kim adds, “I know you don’t wanna hear this, but I hear your forties are your best years.” Paris, in keeping with what she said about never aging out of her “brand,” responds, “I don’t know what that is.” At the same time, there is a moment in the show when Paris remarks that she knows she’s been living like a twenty-one-year-old for her entire life and she seems to think having kids would break that cycle for her. So assured that she’ll have twins by next year, she even gets into a rather foul dialogue with Lele Pons about choosing the kind of kids she wants (thanks to IVF) basically the same way she does her designer dogs. And so, in truth, with her arsenal of hired help, having kids probably won’t change her too much—or she’ll just “transcend” into a momager in the spirit of Kris Jenner.
More “I’m too daft to function” moments are emphasized in each episode via intermixed “cooking tips” to inform her audience of the tools she “didn’t know” the names of—including the likes of tongs and a whisk. Bottom line: excess is the keyword throughout every themed recipe, from dousing the counter in too much Lysol to using an entire bottle of wine for a turkey’s “marination” process to covering a cake with “a shitload of foil.” Hilton doesn’t seem to realize that waste isn’t really “funny” anymore, so much as a sign of being a quintessential privileged white puta. And sure, that’s been her shtick all along, but it really isn’t translating quite so effectively in this new decade leading us into environmental apocalypse.
There are, of course, many other vexing traits of the “airheaded rich white girl” trope for Paris to delight in, particularly during her more “ethnic” forays. Take, for example, “Taco Night” with Saweetie. During the opening of this episode, Paris is dressed like some sort of neo-“ranchero” bitch as she eyeballs the store she’s about to enter like she’s going to colonize it. Again treating the employees at these places as mere “extras” in her world, she enters the establishment as one would expect of a quintessential blanca in East L.A.: utterly oblivious to how irksome her mere presence is as she imagines she’s some sort of cowgirl in a Tarantino movie (but no, this is not Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, so much as The Hatable Ingrate).
She then gets right to mispronouncing things by asking for “corterano” cheese. Meaning Cotija. Her verbal assault endures when she asks another innocent bystander of an employee, “Excuse me? What is a toh-mah-till-ee-oh?” Butchering tomatillo with glee, of course. Later, she notes to Saweetie, “It’s so weird this is called a toh-mah-till-ee-oh and it looks like a weird apple or something. I don’t know.” Surely someone with this much money has to be capable of having seen enough of the world to know how to sound slightly more erudite. Ah, but that brings us to a separate issue addressed by the “Italian Night” episode. This being another prime and unwanted instance of the white girl as represented by Paris grafting elements of a culture she likes being extremely not cute. As “Taco Night” comes to a close, Paris milks the “joke” of butchering the word Cotija deliberately once more until someone else on the set pronounces it correctly from offscreen and she still pretends she can’t say it.
Although the premise for the show is traced to a YouTube video Paris made in early 2020 before the pandemic popped off in America, the daffy housewife bit she plays up in the kitchen and at the table seems as though it was begat with a certain moment in season four of The Simple Life, during which Paris tries to cook bacon, among other food items, with an iron. All for a man who “hammed up” his misogyny for the cameras by declaring, “I would expect Paris and Nicole to keep my house lookin’ great, just like my wife does.” Paris seems to want to be just that sort of wife for her latest fiancé, Carter Reum, gushing about him when she can, particularly to her mother and sister during the finale (hopefully of the series, but it’s likely this will go on). Interestingly, during the first YouTube episode of the show, Paris puts on fewer airs, sounding more like her calm, stoner-voiced self than her sexed-up-babydoll-with-a-Monroe voice incarnation. Perhaps once the show actually got major backing, she decided it was time to bring the “brand” at full-tilt for the production. Or maybe she’s only confident with making lasagna, thus she doesn’t feel obliged to overcompensate with an ersatz persona.
One played up with additional “tips” like, “Cooking in Couture = Dry Cleaning Bills.” “Buy Another New Blender,” reads a new infuriating caption that speaks to Hilton’s profligacy and trying to act like it’s “hilarious.” This was broached several times in the “YouTube pilot” as she grabs wads of paper towels to “pat dry” some of her excess usages or suggests employing bottled water to wash things because, “Who knows what’s in these sewers? It’s beyond.”
“Beyond” being just one of many words that makes her sound like a wind-up doll who can only say, “Loves it,” “That’s bomb,” “Cute” and “Sliving.” Paris staggers through the show relying on her usual antics in this way. The dumb blonde gambit she’s already feigned working so hard to “debunk,” only to play into it as though we’re still supposed to believe that’s who she is. Reaching an apex when the inevitable “dad joke” is made by her upon cautioning of a pan, “Careful, that’s hot. Literally.” Throwing glitter on everything (apart from already being Kesha’s thing) also doesn’t help remedy the trainwreck recipes, which miraculously turn out “delicious” in the end.
A snapshot of Paris’ plastic dynamic with Kathy and Nicky proves to be an essential glimpse in “Family Steak Night With Kathy and Nicky Hilton.” Wanting to go full-stop decadent for her silver-spooned sistren, the mention of $1,000 or $3,700 for a pound of truffles doesn’t prompt even the slightest outrage at the market Paris commences this “story” at. Truffles, of course, are only the jumping off point for her themed “steak night.” What’s more, in preparing for their arrival, she eats the aborted children of a sturgeon happily, her love of caviar no secret. Though one has to wonder: does she really love it or is it just part of the “rich bitch” persona she enjoys projecting? Feeding her dog a spoonful of the unborn fish babies, she announces, “Don’t tell my mom I did that, she’ll think I’m insane”—as though she won’t be seeing the episode later. “How old was I when I tried caviar?” she asks Kathy vacantly when she appears at the house with Nicky, well-aware of the answer. Kathy obliges by informing her of what she already knows—she was young and at a party at the Waldorf when she was offered it. “Loves it” from the first moment she tries it, the legend goes. Which just goes to show that rich people have shitty taste but will like pretty much anything they’re told is expensive.
Kathy galvanizes the wastrel tendencies of her eldest daughter after spilling water on the floor. Paris gleefully engages in parading more prodigal tendencies by grabbing a mound of paper towels to mop up Mommy’s mess. Afterward, as the three sit in the dining room of Paris’ latest decorated-by-Wife of the Party endeavor, a peek of strained WASPy dynamics are served with more memorability than the food. The wooden rapport shared between these women reaching a zenith when Paris and Nicky appear horrified that their mother is chewing and bending over in her chair to pick up her napkin at the same time. Paris reminds, “You wanna, like, look hot on camera.” Even when there’s a climate dystopia outside caused by your rich person’s excesses and oblivions.
