On November 7, 2019, Paris Hilton told an E! reporter, "My new word is ‘sliving.’ It's slaying mixed with living my best life.” That December, while interviewing Kim Petras at the 2019 Streamy Awards, Paris would invoke the word again, also introducing it as a term meaning “killing it and slaying in one,” before inviting Kim to her home, newly dubbed Slivington Manor. Since then, Paris has been #sliving with conviction on Instagram, Youtube, and her podcast, and she shows no sign of letting up.
If Paris is to be believed, “sliving” is the new “that’s hot.” But in the year and a half since the sliving’s genesis, the slifestyle has barely caught on. But this hasn’t stopped Paris. She has been sliving it up at the US Patent and Trademark Office, where nine SLIVING patents currently await approval to bring SLIVING to the masses via branded jewelry, home goods, and baby toys.
I find Paris’s dedication to this questionable neologism inspirational. And I believe that Paris Hilton can achieve anything she sets her mind to, including making this a thing.
As a preview of what we have to look forward to, I went on a Paris Hilton bender consisting of sliving-era artifacts — such as her documentary This is Paris, her podcast This is Paris, and content distributed on all of her main social media platforms — to get an idea of what sliving really is.
Sliving is being single
From the aforementioned 2019 E! interview:
“I am sliving, sliving it, sliving my best life, sliving single… I think I just added that new one on. Single and sliving? Sliving and single?"
Sliving is having a fiancé
Sliving may actually be a love incantation, because the same month Paris debuted sliving at boohoo’s All That Glitters launch party at Nightingale, she met the love of her slife at Thanksgiving in the Hamptons, VC guy Carter Reum. If you missed the news of her proposal, it’s all covered on the section of her website titled “MY BIRTHDAY,” which is devoted to her and Carter’s combination birthday trip (two Aquarians!) to an undisclosed private island, where he proposed with a beautiful ring that Paris has kindly posted a video about on YouTube. Both Richard Branson and Katie Couric mentioned in their respective This is Paris interviews that they know Carter and are very happy for the lucky couple. Small world!
Sliving is eating cereal
According to her documentary and the episode of her podcast in which she interviews her own fiancé, Paris genuinely loves cereal, so the first episode of Paris Tries, “Paris Hilton Rates Sliving Cereals” is not just another bit of cynical food content. That said, the way that she uses sliving here really makes me wonder if sliving has a consistent part of speech, since it is sometimes a verb and sometimes an adjective and sometimes a noun/brand. I think we can all agree that Paris Hilton is sliving, but “sliving cereal” ranked on a scale of 1 to 5 “sliving stars” does not adhere to the same logic. Perhaps sliving is unbound to grammar? Who is to sliving say?
Sliving is cooking
Paris has marketed herself as dumber than she actually is since The Simple Life, but her longevity and legacy could only be the result of a tireless work ethic and real business acumen, even if it looks like she’s always having fun. In her documentary, she says she won’t stop until she makes a billion dollars. But when it comes to Paris’ cooking videos on YouTube, I really don’t think it’s an act. By all observations, she is not a good cook, but I am captivated by the performance in the same way I was while watching Britney Spears make a small sandwich on her Instagram story.
It is particularly excruciating when Paris cooks meat while wearing fingerless gloves, though at least while making the The Princess Paris Sliving Burger she wore rubber gloves on over her fingerless ones while packing the beef patty. It’s… very uncomfortable for anyone with a passing knowledge of food safety. To finish, the sliving burger is stacked with “sliving sauce”(“basically mayonnaise, ketchup, beets, and “sliv juice”) and covered with “sliving sprinkles.” She does not explain what makes the burger sliving.
And soon cooking is about to get a lot more sliving, (or is it the other way around?) now that Cooking with Paris, a 6-part series, is coming to Netflix this August.
Sliving is non-fungible
Is sliving anything more than successfully monetizing your content to the admiration of your friends and followers? An early adopter, Paris has been into NFTs since March 2020. In April 2021 she dropped a dreamy, holographic NFT collection that sold out, with the highest bid for her portrait, Iconic Crypto Queen, reaching over 1.1 million dollars (it appears her fiancé bid $277,777.77). She also recently named her two new dogs Crypto Hilton & Ether Reum this past National Pet Day, as “an ode to @parishilton 's love for NFTs.”
Above all, sliving seems to be about a timely and relevant comeback, and who doesn’t appreciate that? Slay. Kill. Live.