Role models: someone to look up to
by WIN Admin — published in Press Releases
In June 2007, a media circus descended on a detention centre in Lynwood, California. Here, in the space of that single month, the socialite Paris Hilton was locked up, released on medical grounds – and then locked up again. A 400-strong swarm of paparazzi buzzed around her, serious political figures were moved to comment, and the veteran US interviewer Barbara Walters, who has sat down with a multitude of world leaders, divulged that Hilton had called her and said she had both "become much more spiritual" in jail and had dry skin without her moisturiser.
It was the day of Hilton's final release that Abi Moore snapped. A creator of web content from Lewisham, south London, Moore had been working on a film about Naomi Halas, a pioneering chemist researching a treatment for cancer. It was one of a series of CNN films about visionaries – CNN being the very network that also ran Hilton's first post-jail interview.
Moore spent the day of Hilton's release flying from Texas to the UK, and, hard as she tried, she couldn't escape the story. "The next day I was at work. Everything was still Paris-crazy, and something inside me went 'Twang!' I called up my sister, Emma, and said: 'What do you think about setting up a website for girls, with real role models?'"