Paris shared in a 2020 interview that her “Barbie airhead” was a defense mechanism and act to hide childhood trauma. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-real-paris-hilton/

I think she’s savvy to be able to use it to her advantage, but I get the impression that if she could change her history she wouldn’t choose the path that she experienced.

When it aired I was a big fan of The Simple Life (and later Paris Hilton's My New BFF) so I guess you could say I was a fan.

In TSL so much focus was on the comedy of Paris and Nicole being put in ‘everyday’ situations, but what strikes me was how she treated every person she met with respect and (IMO) humility and without any sense of irony. Despite the persona, I think we saw a lot of who Paris is, which I think makes TSL unique in the genre of reality TV.