Thrift-Store Copy of Paris Hilton's "Your Heiress Diary" Is History's Second Saddest Journal

Your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from Golden State thrift stores, estate sales, and flea markets.

Your Heiress Diary

Author: Paris Hilton, purportedly, although Merle Ginsberg gets a "with" credit. (He's probably not an heiress.) Also, the mystery diarist who wrote in and then donated this terrible book.
Date: 2005
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Discovered at: A thrift store somewhere in America

The Cover Promises: "Confess it all to me," which suggests that your secrets might be protected by some kind of Paris-client privilege.

Representative Quotes:

"Look in the mirror once a day and say, 'I'm an heiress! And I'm worth a bundle!!'" -- Paris Hilton, page 39

"I love competition! Goal-oriented! I have good hygiene -- always! I regularly go to the gym! I can sit in silence for hours!" -- Mystery diarist, page 23.

The best evidence yet that publishing is run by people who hate reading, and that media conglomerates are run by people who hate women, and that Paris Hilton is run by some Occupy Wall Street prankster eager to make a point about things, this gaudy pink hardcover copy of Your Heiress Diary could be a new "Figure 1" tacked onto any fresh edition of Das Kapital. Seriously, if you can eyeball this thing for two minutes and still say there's no such thing as class struggle in America, then you are someone so rich and so stupid that you already know that the only way to prove me wrong is to mail great wads of cash to me in care of this newspaper. 

Unlike most journals, this book has photos of Paris Hilton on every page, often accompanied by quotes that reveal something of her worldview. Paris gushes things like "If you're feeling bored, go to Mykonos or Sardinia or Saint-Tropez. You could never be bored there" and "The best thing to wear at a film festival is a dress no one has ever worn." Here's one of Paris' packing tips: "Buy Everything When You Get There."

Here she is being insouciant. 

Because there's nothing more charming than utter helplessness in a survival situation!

Real life is itself a survival situation, one entirely removed from Hilton's world of stylists, trainers, waxers, and Photoshoppers. In fact, the real-life mystery diarist who previously owned this copy of Hilton's book seems to have set out to shame the Hilton lifestyle through sheer force of ironic juxtaposition.

Here, that diarist lays bare her dreams and her struggles to be a kinder person, all right next to the buffed and de-pored armpit of a billionaire star of no discernible human worth.

The book's nasty promise is that by dishing your secrets to Paris Hilton, and by heeding her advice, you, too, will could live like a heiress, as heiress-ness is all about attitude and style rather than, say, happening to be born into impossible wealth accumulated by earlier generations.

The conflict between the lifestyle of heiress Paris and our non-heiress diarist couldn't be more stark:

Note the jaunty exclamation points, as if doing her hair herself in her bathroom is just the spunkiest possible choice.

Your Crap Archivist is withholding any information that might identify the diarist. She lists her name and age -- well north of thirty. On a page titled "Vital Stats," she catalogs all the figures that Paris requests: height, weight, sizes, and net worth -- well south of thirty, but appended with this promise: "(working on it!)"

That diarist also glued into the book photos of outfits cut out of magazines.

Her note by the headless shot of J-Lo: "jumpsuit w/ snap-front buttons!"

One page is headed "I feel like an heiress today because ..." (If you gave this book to Nick Carter, that means something entirely different.) Here, the diarist reveals something encouraging: A belief that this heiress-ness she aspires to is not entirely about owning things she can't afford:

It's only three-sevenths about owning those things.

Standing your ground, here, has nothing to do with that terrifying Florida law. Instead, it's  just another key trait of the peculiar not-by-birthright heiress-ness Paris is peddling. So is self confidence -- both Paris and the diarist mention that frequently. And so is shopping, of course, although here we see that, for regular people, confidence and shopping don't necessarily go together:

For neither the first nor the last time, this anonymous writer is apologizing for not being rich enough in her own diary.

At Paris' instructions, she vows to address this crippling flaw:

This is one of the dangers of our culture of cartoonish wealth and fabulousness. When you are taught that riches are inevitable if only you work and dream hard enough, you might eventually start to worry, as those riches fail to mount up, that somehow it's you that is wrong -- not the fantasy and value system in which you have pickled.

You're biggest mistake: Not having the foresight to have billionaire parents. 

Shocking Detail:

This page teaches that there's no reason to worry about telling lies, especially about things as silly as purporting that the reasonably priced jewelry that you are wearing actually distinguishes you as a member of a class (the fabulously engaged) that you seem to feel guilty for not already having already reached.

Here, Paris herself reminds us that life's little concerns just shouldn't get us down!

In this photo, Paris Hilton is played by one of the boys from Hanson woken up early from naptime. Also, by insisting that "Stress is for nonheiresses" in a book that will only be purchased by nonheiresses who are deeply stressed with the day-to-day struggle of real life in a tough economy, she is a monster.

Highlight:

Yes, in addition to being perfectly coiffed, boasting six-pack abs, wearing nothing but name-brand clothes mined from Big Lots, never buying a drink, and constantly scouting for a way to make more money, our not-quite-a-heiress has learned one singular lesson from the Paris Hiltons of the world: Before leaving the house, she should cork up all gas-producing orifices.

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