Maybe Paris didn’t need a rebrand.

Okay, Paris Hilton. What do you think of when you hear that name?

Juicy Couture. Tiny dogs. Pink. "The Simple Life." “That’s hot.”

Peak 2000s.

I loved Paris. I thought she was hilarious and bought into the version of her we were shown.

We thought the persona was the person

Now I look back at the 2000s and think: MY GOD. We were quick to put women in boxes.

Almost Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs logic.

Happy. Grumpy. Sleepy. Dopey.

Paris was the bimbo. Jessica Simpson was the ditz. Lindsay Lohan was the mess.

Character assigned. Next.

Then there was the “right” kind of woman.

Rory Gilmore. Bookish, dreaming of Harvard, pretty without seeming to care.

Or Laney in "She’s All That". Glasses, frizzy hair, awkward clothes. Put her in a dress and TA-DA: beautiful AND smart.

Except she was smart before the dress.

Want a time capsule? Pink’s "Stupid Girls."

Be smart. Be ambitious. Don’t be too pink, too sexy, or too into clothes or attention. Ideally, be “not like other girls".

Which sounds feminist until you realize we were still ranking women.

I absorbed that too. When I was younger, I’d say, “I mostly hang out with guys,” like that made me more interesting.

Meanwhile, I loved fashion, makeup and pink. I went to fashion school.

Liking a handbag has never cancelled out having a brain.

Paris broke those rules. She was glamorous, loud, and feminine, and she knew people were looking.

We wanted women to be looked at. We just didn’t want them to enjoy being seen.

And when an intimate video was shared without her consent?

Somehow, she became the joke.

Then #MeToo changed the conversation. Women spoke up, told their own stories and pushed back on the labels put on them.

Paris has spoken about abuse and ADHD, advocates for survivors and fights non-consensual AI deepfakes.

Now she’s one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in AI.

The story isn’t that Paris suddenly got smart.

Maybe Paris didn’t need a rebrand.

Maybe we needed to change how we saw women.

That’s hot.