Ditzy Rich Kids Now Reality TV Fodder

Dec. 3, 2003 -- They're young, they're good-looking and they're rich. And now they're TV stars too.

Young heirs including Paris Hilton and Ally Hilfiger are the new darlings of reality TV.

They're not your average Joe Millionaire or Survivor cast member looking to win a million, but the sons and daughters of the über wealthy, who already have their millions.

Kids who've grown up with names that exude wealth like Hilton, Johnson, Trump and Newhouse are popping up all over the airwaves, with their privileged lives in full view.

"I feel like I do not deserve all of this," said Ally Hilfiger, a native New Yorker who takes the Manhattan shopping scene by storm on the new MTV reality series Rich Girls. "We just prance around this damn city like it's our shopping haven."

Hilfiger is the daughter of fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, whose business is reportedly worth $715 million. She and her wealthy best friend, Jamie Gleicher, are the stars of Rich Girls, focusing on — what else? — their real world.

Annoying, Yet Exciting

"These are very rich people talking about what it feels like to be very, very rich," said Amy Barnett, managing editor of Teen People magazine. "I mean I think they put themselves in a position where you're going to feel envy, you're going to feel annoyance, you're going to feel excitement. It's complicated. You know, I think we're all excited by it. I'm watching."

And so evidently are many other people. HBO is airing, Born Rich, a tell-all documentary created by the 23-year-old heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical empire, Jamie Johnson. Born Rich is a no-holds-barred look at what it means to be privileged and pampered from birth. Gleicher was born in Manhattan, but moved to suburban New Jersey when she was 4.

"I didn't always know I was rich," said Gleicher. "But growing up in the country, I just thought that everybody had carriages and horses and stuff like that."

Pitfalls of Fame

Jamie Johnson, the Johnson & Johnson heir, turned the cameras on himself and his peers for the HBO documentary. There are pitfalls to being young and rich, Johnson told Oprah Winfrey on Oxygen's After the Show.

"I think it's important for people who were born rich not to accept that position of privilege because a lot of problems follow," Johnson told Winfrey.

That was certainly true for Paris Hilton, the heiress to the Hilton Hotel fortune, a New York gossip page regular who was often spotted partying at trendy venues. But recently she ended up with some unwanted publicity when a sex tape featuring herself and an old boyfriend surfaced on the Internet.

Hilton and best friend, Nicole Richie (daughter of singer Lionel Richie), are now starring in their own rich girl reality series called The Simple Life, in which they move in with a rural family. Without their usual cell phones and charge cards, the pair is faced with just wholesome living and a hard day's work on an Arkansas farm.

After the farming mother asks, "Will you girls help me pluck the chickens?" Hilton declines.

"No, I'll vomit," she says.

Just Like Us?

But besides pointing out how different the heirs are, the reality shows also show the elements of day-to-day life that anyone can relate to, Barnett says. "It's like the inside track to a whole new crazy world and just to see the fact that these people really are human," she said. "They whine, they nag, they get tired. All of the things that the rest of us do. They just do it with a Louis Vuitton bag in their hand."

At the same time, many people would wonder why young people who already have such great fortune would be willing to risk it all for public fame.

"It's probably just fun for them," Barnett said. "They're already rich, so it's not like they're working toward a financial goal. I think that they just want to show off a little bit and have some fun and blow off some steam."

The rich kids may be ruling TV now, but they may also start to rust.

"I think it's gonna get old fast," Barnett said. "Seeing rich celebrity meltdown after rich celebrity meltdown, there's only so many ways [to] make it interesting."