"Paris Hilton" quote on a woman's animals (mink, jaguar, tiger) (1991)

[Baker, John]

        It's an old joke.  We can be pretty sure that it does not go back before 1935, when the Jaguar brand name was invented.  The joke is, of course, intended to denigrate both the shallow and faithless woman and her foolish, cuckolded man.  Paris Hilton, who has followed in the footsteps of many another successful performer in portraying herself as a dumb blonde, is a natural butt of such jokes, and a Google search shows that there are a surprisingly large number of web pages that attribute it to her.  It does sound like the sort of thing that Johnny Carson would have said on the Tonight Show.  It sounds terribly dated today:  Many women no longer see the mink in the closet as particularly desirable, or even tolerable, and not that many are looking for a sugar daddy to support them.  Paris Hilton herself, you will note, is a working woman, despite having sufficient inherited assets that she could get by without a career.

John Baker