Sad Girl Special
The Birthday Extravaganza: Emily Brontë, Mary Shelley, more Paris Hilton, plus a consideration of my most hated lip balm and most loved pillow
This month marks the one year anniversary of Sad and Famous 🎉 Thanks for being here!
Sad
When I saw the trailers for both 2022’s biopic Emily and 2018’s Mary Shelley, I was wholly uninterested. Mostly because biopics are generally sanitized, aspirational nonsense, and often women focused ones have a girlbossy vibe I crinkle my nose at. However, a friend of mine started an accidental project of watching depressing victorian gothic biopics and got me looped into it. I may talk more about Effie Grey and The Invisible Woman at a later point but Emily and Mary Shelley were the standouts, with Emily being one of the best films I’ve watched in several years. Both are unashamedly sad and I think that’s a major part of what makes them work!
Emily is a fantasy about what Emily Brontë’s life might have been like since not a ton is known about her as a person, and what is known is somewhat suspect (i.e sister problems, “there is what might be called Charlotte's smoke-screen…Emily evidently shocked her, to the point where she may even have doubted her sister's sanity…Charlotte rewrote her character, history and even poems on a more acceptable model”). The film is extremely atmospheric and genuinely creepy. Emma Mackey sells it as a weird person, who, though beautiful, looks awkward and even ghoulish at times. The costume designer puts her in badly fitted, unflattering dresses that contort her posture. She’s got the too intense kid sitting alone in the cafeteria vibe on lock, without it veering into endearing Wednesday Addams territory.
Emily’s life is filled with loss, betrayal, social anxiety and is hampered by a deep inability to conform that sets her at the margins everywhere she goes, even within her own family. What Emily loves, she loves with a brutality and conviction that others struggle with. She is portrayed here as being compelled to write and create, but with an indifference to publication, mostly being pushed along that path by her sisters. This is a portrait of an anti go-getter, anti-cute, anti-charm odd girl. She seems pleased when looking at the first published edition of Wuthering Heights but unhappy to share herself with the wider world. Emily weaves in her inspiration for her work without broadcasting it, which I appreciated. I don’t think there will ever be a good adaptation of Wuthering Heights (which to me is a kind of black comedy) but this film approximates the feel of it.
I’ve always loved the story of how Mary Shelley (neé Wollstonecraft-Godwin) learned to read by tracing the letters on her famous feminist mother’s grave. The ultimate goth on so many levels! I also have big feelings about Frankenstein, which my mother made the bizarre choice to read to me in second grade, so it’s etched pretty deep in me. The entire event of its creation,—and the bi-creation of a whole new genre of literature—a ghost story contest with Lord Byron one gloomy summer in a Swiss villa, is one of the more bizarre and miraculous moments in the history of the written word. I worried a bit that Elle Fanning would throw me out of the story, cutting the figure, as she does, of such a modern beauty ideal. But, as when I watched The Great, her performance is so strong that I stopped caring.
The film chiefly concerns itself with teenage Mary’s romantic relationship with a selfish, oblivious Percy Bysshe Shelley who, though married with a child, convinces Mary to run away with him and embrace “free love.” Mary, bright, fiery and constricted under a rigid step-mother, is like most teenagers, dying to make her own way in the world, and in the perfect headspace to drink in all of Shelley’s bullshit. This is a film that deals in consequences and grief, the two swirling around each other as each choice plays out, most often resulting in Mary and Shelley trapped in a choked, dirty little apartment where their depravation and pain will no longer be ignored.
One of the things the film did best was deal with the death of Mary’s first child. I think that in historical films the death of children is often presented in a matter of fact way, like, oh well, that’s just how it was back then and everyone moves on. This has never rung true for me, either as a person or a historian! I really felt Mary’s grief and struggle around the preventable death of her daughter at the hands of Shelley’s selfishness, how it haunted her, the penetrating tragedy of it, the empty space where her child was. The film gave her room to be a three dimensional person who grappled with her own mistakes, contradictions, joy and anguish. Like with Emily, I thought Mary Shelley handled Mary’s creative inspirations in a way that never came across as overly pat.
Famous
My favourite newsletter I’ve written in the last year is the one from May, my deep dive on Paris Hilton:
Originally, I included a comment on that newsletter listing all the things that didn’t make the cut for the essay that I wanted to talk about. My friend
suggested I erase that comment and instead send a slightly elaborated list out in a follow up newsletter. I’m going to do that below, but for some of the topics I was interested in discussing, I reached out to my friend and fellow writer, Amber Taufen, who had more expertise on them than I did. I am including a discussion with her. Truth of the matter is, I feel a bit haunted by Paris Hilton. I was deeply troubled by her story.Here are the topics that didn’t make the cut for the original essay:
2005’s House of Wax, Paris’s big screen debut, where Warner Bros promoted the film with the tagline “see Paris die.” Paris reflecting upon this says she “gets why” they did this, without any further comment which is disappointing. She also says she still “loves” South Park even though the episode they made about her was sickening. She only doles out only the lightest criticism. I often felt in the book she was struggling not to say anything bad about anyone, wanting to come off as a reformed bitch, but instead coming off as imperceptive and permissive. Seriously WTF was wrong with us in the aughties. I can’t imagine this flying now as a marketing strategy. Can you picture this happening for a film Hailey Bieber is in?
Paris Hilton with promotional merch and advertising reading “See Paris Die” for the 2005 film House of Wax Why didn’t Paris’s family ACTUALLY send her to a boarding school abroad instead of lie about it and go straight to the whole kidnapping thing? Why didn’t they try harder to get her other help? Why didn’t they research enough to discover that Paris would not get a high school diploma from the sacred straight schools? Paris’s teenage crimes at this time were that she skipped school and stayed out all night at raves, she didn’t even do drugs (not that anyone should ever be sent to these schools, drugs or no, but just to point out that she wasn’t engaged in life threatening behaviour). Paris relays in the book that her mom tells her, “you’d do the same thing to save your child’s life.” What??? Paris’s guilt about what she ‘did’ to her parents pervades her book and it’s really fucked up because she didn’t really do anything to them besides not flawlessly waltz through being a teenager.
Apparently many celebs have gone to these abusive reform schools but Paris is the only celeb to have spoken out about it publicly thus far. None have come out in support of Paris’s activism to try and get laws in place to stop these schools. I think this speaks a lot to how thoroughly these schools broke, shamed and frightened the kids who attended them. Its miraculous Paris has decided to break this silence even without a larger web of support.
The good sister/bad sister, scapegoat/golden child dichotomy of Nicky and Paris. The fact that Nicky’s life pretty much followed the exact path Kathy Hilton set out for her daughters, for them to become high profile socialites. Nicky married into the billionaire Rothschild family, lives in a Manhattan penthouse, does philanthropy. I wonder what Nicky’s burden has been to always carry the mantle of family “good girl.”
A more nuanced discussion of privilege, how Paris said she couldn’t be broken by her abusers at these school telling her she was nothing because she knew she was a Hilton and how this helped her to survive. A further look at suicide statistic of graduates from these schools or if any families of suicide victims have come out against these schools.
How society cannot hold space for intelligence and hotness in the same female body. There were multiple people discussing Paris’s high intelligence in the documentary, which Paris found easier and safer to mask under a persona of stupidity, which made her hugely successful, wealthy and hated.
There’s a scene in the documentary where she meets up with other survivors from these schools and they laugh about seeing her on The Simple Life and how funny it was to them that she was pretending she didn’t know how to clean anything when they’d watched her scrub toilets, and worse, for two years. How incredible it is none of these people went to the press at the height of Paris’s fame.
Amber Taufen is a journalist, real estate expert, mom and raver. She also read Paris’s memoir and I was curious for her opinion on several aspects of Paris’s story. Here’s what she had to say:
As a parent, did you find Kathy Hilton’s behaviour abusive? I don’t want to get into armchair diagnoses per se and should mention virtually nothing is said or known about Rick Hilton’s role in the family other than that he apparently co-signed all of Kathy’s decisions.
I am not a professional, so all the normal caveats here -- but yes, I do think there is something pretty seriously wrong with Kathy Hilton and how she behaves toward her daughters. She seems jealous of both Paris and Nicky in an unhealthy way. I don't have daughters (I have two sons) and I know or have heard that this can be a thing that happens in mother/daughter relationships, but I have to say it blew my mind a little bit to read about Paris' experiences with her mom in this context.
I don't think Kathy Hilton gave either of her daughters very much agency when they were growing up. It's clear she wanted them to present a certain facade that would help them marry well, which seems to be her main aspiration for both of them. (A reflection of herself? Kind of seems like it from where I'm sitting!) I can somewhat relate to this; I feel like my mom also wanted me to take up hobbies (such as tennis) that would help me meet "eligible" men, and to behave in ways that showcased me as a potential wife -- classy, tactful, beautiful in a kind of demure way.
That said, when I made it clear to my mom that I wasn't interested in finding a man to take care of me because I wanted to be the kind of person who takes care of myself, she did not try to force me into that lifestyle, and she didn't block me from getting the education I'd need to be successful, or at least to make success more accessible to me. We cannot say the same for Kathy Hilton. (Thanks, Mom!)
There is a part in the book when Paris is about 15 or 16; she has ADHD, she's really not interested in school, but she is very interested in modeling. Instead of seeing her daughter for who she is and accepting her -- and maybe coming up with some kind of compromise: "you attend classes and try to get your GED if I let you keep modeling" -- Kathy Hilton essentially tries to force Paris into compliance with some of the most brutal and awful tactics you can imagine. I don't believe she would do that to her child if she loved Paris as a person more than she loved how the concept of Paris reflected on Kathy.
I thought that Paris was very kind and forgiving toward her mother throughout the book. One of the harshest things she says (and I don't think she intends it to be at all harsh) is that she thinks Kathy obstructed her modeling career in part because Kathy knew more about that world than Paris did and was concerned as a parent, but also because watching either of her daughters achieve heights in a career where Kathy herself was middling at best was too much for her to handle as a mom. (Paris said it in a much nicer way; this is my interpretation of that reality.)
This to me is extremely telling. If either of my sons ends up becoming a renowned writer, the closest equivalent to my own life, I honestly can't imagine feeling anything except for pride in them and joy in their accomplishments. It is very hard for me to imagine being resentful of their success. It's absolutely impossible for me to imagine doing something like standing in the way of one of them getting a book published as a minor because of my feelings about it.
I think Paris loves her mother and is hesitant to say anything that might estrange her from Kathy -- and what does that itself tell you about the nature of their relationship?
In the documentary This is Paris, Kathy goes off about how husband Rick Hilton didn’t get as much money as his siblings did when he was starting out, and how she and he had to “work” to get to where they are now. Can you give some context on what that would mean in the world of luxury real estate, in which Rick runs his brokerage firm?
The Hilton family fortune started with Conrad Hilton, who was Paris' great-grandfather. When he died in 1979, he left $10,000 to each of his nieces and nephews and his daughter, and $500,000 to his two siblings; the rest of his money went to a foundation. His son, Barron -- Paris' grandfather -- had been the president of Hilton Hotels for 13 years at this point (since 1966). Barron contested his father's will and settled for four million shares of Hilton Hotels.
So is it true that Conrad Hilton left almost nothing to his family? Sure, kinda, if you don't count the executive-level job at a billion-dollar company, and if you forget about the literally millions of shares that one of those family members wrested back from his dead father in court.
Barron Hilton in turn was worth about $4.5 billion when he died in 2019. He had 24 family members who survived him, and he left them each $5.6 million and donated 97% of his wealth to the foundation his dad created.
There is some real obvious irony in this story, but I will just start and end by pointing out that if you're a billionaire, you can give away the vast majority of your fortune and still leave enough for all 24 of your family members to be in the top 1% of the planet, wealth-wise. Acting like you are a pauper because you "only" got $5 million is frankly ridiculous.
One of the most ridiculous parts of this whole "we are self-made wealthy people!" nonsense that Paris is spewing on behalf of her father has to do with his real estate brokerage. Being successful in real estate sales requires one basic skill: forming relationships with people who can afford to buy or sell a house. In order to be successful in luxury real estate sales, you need to know a lot of rich people. That's a pretty tall order for someone like me; I'd have to put my kids in different schools, probably move house entirely, join some country clubs and prominent boards, and generally hobnob with people who can afford $10 million homes.
How hard do you think it is for Richard Hilton to make those connections? He has lived in that world his entire life; he doesn't need to try to "break into" it. These are people he grew up knowing. I'm sure he did have to work kinda hard to start his business, and I'm extra sure that someone who started a luxury brokerage without a father worth $5.4 billion has worked exponentially harder than Richard Hilton could even begin to imagine.
You were part of the late 90s/early 2000s rave scene, as was Paris, what was your experience? Any thoughts you have to share on Paris’s success as a DJ now, as someone who is a fan of electronic music and who has written music journalism?
In some ways, I feel like the rave scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s was one of the safest places for a teenage girl, especially one who stayed sober. There was a very much communal vibe around preserving the secrecy of the dancefloor; nobody wanted any cops there, so it was often a self-policed environment, and pains were taken to make sure that not just anyone could stumble across the party. This wasn't because they were deliberately exclusive, more because they were giant safe spaces, in a way. The events I attended were very diverse, both in terms of race and gender. Self-expression was encouraged, and I remember feeling like raves were places I felt very accepted no matter what I was wearing. Nobody wanted any random jerks crashing the party.
So it doesn't surprise me that Paris found the warehouse scene in New York as a teenager and became attached to it. I cannot even begin to imagine the attraction of that kind of anonymity and safety that she experienced and how rare that was for her.
That scene has not disappeared entirely, but it's been heavily absorbed by what I would call more mainstream events. Global Dance Festival and Electric Daisy Carnival are the new massive warehouse parties of the past, and now if you want to go really underground, you have to find smaller clubs or even private invite-only events. And a similar level of privacy isn't completely available anymore. I started going to parties before cell phones had cameras, and the wildest things I saw did not get documented. That's definitely not how events, even underground events, work in 2023.
I get the impression from the book that Paris doesn't really get to go to underground events anymore. She's too recognizable. And that makes me a little sad for her, because I don't think the big parties (even her private Coachella backstage one) have that same kind of vibe.
I've also never seen Paris Hilton DJ, and I doubt I ever will. She says in the book she makes more than $1 million per appearance?! That honestly seems totally ludicrous for the amount of time and effort that I imagine she is able to contribute to her DJ career, given her brand management and everything else she is doing with her life. She's very arguably not a full-time DJ the same way a lot of professionals are — I imagine that both DJ Diesel (aka Shaquille O'Neal) and DJ Pauly D from The Jersey Shore put more time and effort into their sets than Paris does — and there's simply no way I would pay a ridiculous cover charge (what would that even be? $1,000?) to see Paris Hilton at the decks, I am sorry. That is just pure silliness.
Thanks Amber!
Find more of Amber’s work here
Hate it/Love it
Sometimes when I end up hating something I buy, instead of tossing it, I will begin a weird kind of relationship with it. I am not a hanger onto of things, I will happily Marie Kondo my way through all of my possessions, I don’t care about throwing things out or giving them away. So I really don’t know why this happens to me, but it did happen to me with the La Labo lip balm. I’m not going to bother linking to it because you shouldn’t buy it, it’s terrible, idk how it’s still being sold.
Not all that occasionally I am awake, deeply depressed, at like 1:30am and looking to buy something so I don’t have to think about myself or my life. The most soothing things are fancy things, the reasons for this are a whole ass other essay, I am not getting into it atm. But so I’ll like need a new lip balm and end up with a £13 tube of this shit because all I know is La Labo is fancy and that’s all I need to know in order to buy it. I ignored the reviews. “This lip balm has a terrible consistency,” they said and I paid no heed. Well, reader, you won’t be surprised to hear it DOES have a terrible consistency. It’s kind of grainy! Lovely for something you put on your lips. Also, it has an awful applicator, it’s just like a weirdly tiny screw top? Who is making lip balms in a tube, in a post-Covid world, that you need to smear onto your finger first? If I wanted that, I would have bought one of those little tins of vaseline at Boots. Its final crime is that it is huge, which you can tell from the picture above, it’s like 3 years worth of lip balm, but helpfully informs you that it is only certified as “fresh” for six months. A.) What does that mean? and B.) Who is going to need to slather their lips that much in six months??? Something medical would need to be going on at that point which fancy lip balm is not going to help with.
It was totally impractical for daily life, so I put it in my bedroom where I put it on before bed. I do, actually, slather a lot on, as like a grainy, punishing overnight lip treatment hack (lol) and even still I probably have another years worth of lip balm in there. I need to just throw it away but I enjoy something about how unhappy it makes me, about seeing it lurking there on by my bedroom mirror and doing our little routine where I pick it up and think about how terrible it is and how impossible it is that so much of it is left still. Here’s a link to the world’s best lip balm which is perfectly sized, has a normal consistency and a lovely applicator.
I have decided this year I am against square couch cushions! They are so uncomfortable and boring! They’re hard to manoeuvre in a good way under your neck if you want to sleep on your couch (which I do basically every day), it’s hard to find corresponding covers to the size of cushion you already own, etc. This revelation was inspired by a joke Christmas present my sister sent to me of a pink dinosaur that ended up being a super comfy couch cushion but didn’t really vibe with my living room aesthetic. So I began the surprisingly difficult search for weird shaped couch cushions and I am so glad that I did because I found the greatest one of all time! This is basically a long baguette sized pillow that you can tie into a knot but which you can also easily untie and scrunch/fold/cuddle however you want to make yourself more comfortable. Right now, for example, it is both propping up my lap top and supporting my neck. I love it so much that earlier this year when a seam split, I spent several weeks just jamming the stuffing back in every day, rather than take it to the seamstress down the street and be parted with it for a few days. I also love my cloud shaped cushion and my basketball shaped cushion, all from the same Etsy store my knot came from.
Watch this space: Britney Spears has a memoir coming out October 24th! 💅🏻
you have completely talked me into watching Emily. top of the list now.