I just finished my newest art, Fromage de Célébrité which was minted on April 23, 2021 on Foundation: https://foundation.app/stellabelle/fromage-de-celebrite-27762
Below you will find my thoughts and motivations.
Fromage de Célébrité
Yes, it’s about Paris Hilton. Glad we could get that out of the way. I never paid any attention to Paris Hilton until very recently. I mostly exited out of mainstream news, celebrity gossip, and have been working and building in the crypto and cryptoart world since 2016. I’m not much of a glamour person, I’m frugal and hardly spend money on extravagant stuff. I was completely unaware that Paris Hilton had built a mega business empire. It simply didn’t cross my radar.
I knew that Paris was an early adopter of Ethereum back in 2016 and was active in the NFT space over a year ago. She always seemed much smarter than the character she created for Reality TV. That much I knew.
https://foundation.app/stellabelle/fromage-de-celebrite-27762
Where do I start?
I love the work of Blake Kathryn, and when I heard that Paris Hilton had teamed up with Blake I was very happy, since Blake’s work is genius.
The Bedroom Bliss in the drop is quite phenomenal and Blake’s signature style really came through:
https://twitter.com/blakekathryn/status/1383419651242090504
- blakekathryn
Bedroom Bliss on Nifty Gateway: https://niftygateway.com/itemdetail/primary/0x5bcac8ff7ea6285b940b7eca06731402562084b1/1
Now we come to the piece Iconic Crypto Queen, which is the reason I felt it necessary to take a deeper look into the world of Paris Hilton. My honest gut reaction when I first took at a glance at this art was, “Is this a parody?”. I felt a mix of horror and absurdity because Blake’s work is usually off the charts amazing. Then I viewed this tweet from the buyer of Iconic Crypto Queen:
“I am honoured that I was able to add "ICONIC CRYPTO QUEEN" by https://twitter.com/mondoir/status/1383849718883655681
@ParisHilton & 
This NFT, the stilted one that has boobs hanging out of a Marie Antoinette gown and is Paris’ awkward wet dream of herself is “paving the way for women empowerment in NFT space?”
Is this a joke?
Oftentimes, I will ask my 83 year-old mother what she thinks of various art, just to check my own litmus paper. When she looked at the ICONIC CRYPTO QUEEN, she replied, “It’s cheesy.”
As a woman when viewing that tweet above, I felt like someone just punched me in the face, sent me back 50 years, force fed me a pink instruction manual on “How to be a Female”: wear sexy clothes with your boobs hanging out, encourage the male gaze whenever you can, be rich, and don’t show your true self, instead, give the world a fake version of you as a “happy, sexy yes girl who doesn’t reveal her intelligence.”
That’s exactly how I felt. I felt bad. It didn’t feel like empowerment at all. It felt confusing because I love the work of Blake Kathryn but this art seemed forced and not similar to her other work and as a “woman of cryptoart”, I was somehow supposed swallow my real thoughts and press the like button?
I’ve been working in the cryptoart space for years since 2016, doing art and writing, building cryptoart communities like Slothicorn, teaching crypto to noobs, paying out thousands of my own crypto to artists before Super Rare even existed, and suddenly this NFT is paving the way for women empowerment in the NFT space?
No.
I am all for helping women in cryptoart get educated, cross-pollinate, join forces and reclaim attention, and that is why WOCA (women of cryptoart) was created https://womenofcrypto.art/ It helped me quite a bit when I needed to find resources and network. I recommend it to women who are just entering the NFT space and who need to meet and find their tribe. It’s very well-organized and has a good discord channel and regular events. If someone wants to support female empowerment, reach out the WOCA founders on discord, and find out how to help. I’m sure they could benefit from virtual land purchases, for example. Join the WOCA discord here: https://discord.gg/NwfKjC8vzt
I think Paris has good intentions but using that male-gazing NFT as the poster child for the female empowerment movement feels really weird to me. It feels wrong on many levels.
https://twitter.com/ParisHilton/status/1383805739915902985
- ParisHilton
All of this started to make me curious about Paris, and who she really is.......I just finished watching her documentary, and I gotta say, now I get it.
So in the Paris documentary I learned that her current goal in life is to make a billion dollars. Nothing wrong with that, at all. In one part she admitted, “I really like making money”. I enjoyed hearing her say this. More women need to say this exact thing.
I also learned that Paris experienced a lot of abuse from that boarding school, which still affects her to this day. The most shocking part of the film was learning that her own parents hired two guys to come at night, while she was in her bed, and take her away to that boarding school. That night when she was taken away, she thought she was being kidnapped, and was screaming, her parents just stood there and watched, without saying a word. That part was insane. I felt real bad for Paris.
It reminded me a little of my own life, when I was a model for Elite, starving myself, having moved away from my own parents when I was a teen, and then feeling like I could never tell my parents the truth. Paris is on a way different scale of course, but the feelings I had as a teen were similar. I didn’t trust my parents, either. But they never did anything terrorizing like her parents did. That was very shocking to learn.
Paris never telling her mother how that abuse had affected her was really bad to see. It showed how Paris had emotionally cut herself off from her parents at a young age and how her parents had really fucked up, big time.
So, after Paris was released from the school where she had experienced a lot of trauma and abuse, she never said anything to her parents, out of fear that they would send her back. It was then that Paris vowed to herself to become successful, and make her own money, so that no one could control or manipulate her again. I get it.
Paris also admitted she feels guilty for helping to originate the whole selfie culture on social media. She expressed remorse when telling a story about preteen girls who can’t take a photo of themselves without using glamour filters. It was a depressing moment in that film to hear her acknowledge that she helped build the monster of Instagram selfie culture, but was geniunely perplexed as how to undo any of it.
As a parent of a young girl, this selfie culture is something which I don't like, and know is problematic to development.
After all, I was a teen model in the 1980's and experienced first-hand the ill effects of the modeling industry including anorexia, bulimia and severe depression. Once I left the fashion industry, got therapy and went to college, my bulimia disappeared. I really don't want anyone to go through what I experienced.
While watching the film, a lot of my own shit began to bubble up to the surface, namely, the fact that I don’t trust people, especially men, and how I decided not to have close relationships with them, out of my past negative experience.
I was also struck by the fact that she appeared to be a lonely person and wouldn’t allow herself to take vacations. She talked a lot about her insomnia. It almost feels like she built her businesses out of psychological survival. Nothing wrong with that at all, either, I just didn’t understand her psychology until now, and that is through the lens of a movie so there’s a chance it might not be completely accurate.
Her documentary is worth seeing. It was a good story.
I had drawn most of my painting before I watched the documentary. Afterwards, I added the black sitting figure on her forehead, symbolizing the nightmares she said she continues to experience from that fateful night that two men took her from her bed and into the boarding school.
I still think the ICONIC CRYPTO QUEEN NFT is cheesy, just like my mom said, but I now have more understanding about why Paris is driven to make money. In my opinion, that NFT is about the Paris brand. It’s not about the internal reality of Paris.
Paris Hilton has split herself into two: one is the Paris brand which is about business deals, happy superficiality, sex appeal, beauty products, all of which brings her enormous monetary wealth. The other side of Paris is composed of: great intelligence, hyper vigilance, overwork, a desire to unravel her past abuse, research, determination, drama, insomnia, loneliness, ten thousand dresses.......................and female empowerment aspirations.
I support all of these uncomfortable feelings because it brought me greater understanding and clarity. I think if I wasn’t so bothered by her cheesy NFT, I would be ignorant about the real Paris.
I think if I was wealthy and powerful and wanted to make a difference for women in the cryptoart world, I would work directly with WOCA since this organization was born organically from women in the cryptoart ecosystem and is already set up. They can be reached via Twitter: https://twitter.com/hellowoca
I think my art, Fromage de Célébrité is more about the internal Paris, or at least it’s my interpretation of the Paris I’d like to see more of........the one who shows us something real inside. I think we’ve all had enough of the brand at this point.
I will say, however, in comparison to the recent NFT drop by Eminem on Nifty Gateway, the Iconic Crypto Queen is a masterpiece.
Fromage de Celebrite NFT was sold on Foundation for .75 ETH.
Follow me on Twitter for more honest, raw opinions about NFT stuff:
https://twitter.com/stellabelle