Super Trash Spectacles

Abstract

In 2007, under Urban Dictionary’s first and most-approved-of definition of “white trash” (1,929 thumbs up, 511 thumbs down) was the statement “Paris Hilton proves you don’t have to be poor to be white trash.”¹ By May 2013, the votes were 7,585 up, 2,563 down.² The stigmatizing label has been assigned to the millionaire Hilton heiress because of media coverage detailing her pornographic lifestyle, laziness, expressed ignorance (e.g., expressing on the reality show, The Simple Life, the belief that Wal-Mart sold “walls”), arrest for drunk driving in 2006, defiance of the law (speeding at 70 mph in a 35 mph zone and repeated driving with a suspended license), serving a subsequent jail sentence in 2007, and expressing “bad taste” when posing nude covered with gold paint to promote Rich Prosecco, a canned version of an Italian sparkling wine. In 2007 the Guinness Book of World Records dubbed Hilton the “Most Overrated Celebrity.”³ An AOL poll found that Hilton was voted the Second Worst Celebrity Role Model of 2006, just after number one, Britney Spears.⁴