Paris Hilton is crucial

As we all know, MTV stopped playing music somewhere in the mid-90s and started airing mostly terrible shows geared toward our age group.

But, amongst all the crap, there have been a few gems in the rough, and the newest groundbreaking show they put on is Paris Hilton’s “My New BFF.” I’ve been a steadfast watcher of this show since it premiered a few weeks ago.  

“Paris Hilton?” you ask. “You’re writing about Paris Hilton instead of the debates?”

Yes, I am.

And, although I never thought I’d say this, I’m going to do the unthinkable: I am going to defend Paris Hilton.

The thing about celebrities is their relationship to us “common folk” is one with a tricky duality. They’re everywhere in the media, we know more about their lives than we’d really care to, and we get to make fun of them for all the dumb things they do and the weird people they date.

It seems shallow to actually care about celebrities’ lives, so why is it everywhere? Why, even if you don’t follow tabloids or even watch much TV, do you still know about Britney’s meltdowns and that Miley Cyrus took scandalous photos?

Paris Hilton, more than perhaps any other celebrity today, garners the most criticism and attention in the media. This is most obviously because she technically didn’t really do anything to be famous.

She was famous because her dad was rich, and then she just went out partying a lot, doing outrageous things, wearing designer clothes and so on.

The wonder of Paris Hilton, and why I think she is justified and even necessary in our culture, is that we are fascinated by the lives of the rich. In a way, Paris gets to live out some sort of American fantasy. She gets to do whatever she wants, buy whatever she wants, party constantly and get all this attention for all these things.

Celebrities perform cultural work in our society. They get heavily criticized, but we have to see what that criticism is really saying about our culture.  

The celebrity in a way serves as a hero, either to highlight what we value in our society or to break all the rules and show what we don’t approve of. When Britney was too fat, it was all we heard about because our society values thinness.  

When Michael Jackson got all the plastic surgery, he was criticized because his race and even gender weren’t physically obvious, and in our society, we feel very uncomfortable if we can’t sort out people into categories of race and gender.  

And when Paris Hilton was famous for doing nothing, we criticized her, because we believe that fame is something that should be earned for having an exceptional talent.

While I myself wouldn’t want to be Paris’ best friend, we have to view celebrities as what they are and what work they perform culturally instead of writing them off as shallow and vapid.

Paris Hilton can actually teach us a lot about American society.