Entrepreneur PARIS HILTON, age 44, is advocating – based on her own experience – for victims to take legal action against creators and distributors of AI-generated porn deepfakes with the DEFIANCE (Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits) Act. Last year she campaigned to pass a bill protecting institutionalised young people.
Standing on the US Capitol steps, Hilton said of the 2004 leak by her boyfriend of a sex tape: “When I was 19 a private, intimate video of me was shared with the world without my consent. It was abuse. There were no laws to protect me. There weren’t even words for what had been done to me. The internet was still new and so was the cruelty that came with it.
They called me names, laughed, made me the punchline. They sold my pain for clicks then told me to be quiet, move on, even be grateful for the attention. These people didn’t see me as a young woman who had been exploited.
They didn’t see my panic, humiliation or shame. I lost control over my body, my reputation. My sense of safety and self-worth was stolen from me.
What happened to me then is happening now to millions of women and girls in a new and more terrifying way.
Before, someone had to betray your trust and steal something real. Now all it takes is a computer and a stranger’s imagination. Deepfake pornography has become an epidemic.
Over 100,000 explicit deepfake images [of me have been] made by AI. Each time a new one appears, that horrible feeling returns, that fear that someone somewhere is looking at it right now and thinking it’s real. No amount of money or lawyers can stop it or protect me from more. It’s the newest form of victimisation happening at scale to your daughters, your sisters, your friends and neighbours.”
The statistic that 1 in 8 girls experience deepfake porn Hilton finds “staggering. Too many women are afraid to exist online or sometimes to exist at all. I know how that feels, because I lived it.
Now I have a daughter who’s just 2.5 years old and I would go to the ends of the earth to protect her. But I can’t protect her from this, not yet. And that’s why I’m here.
This isn’t just about technology, it’s about power. It’s about using someone’s likeness to humiliate, silence and strip them of their dignity. Victims deserve more than after-the-fact apologies. We deserve justice.
When your image is violated, it doesn’t disappear. It lives inside you, but so does your power. Telling the truth helped me heal.
I am Paris Hilton, a woman, a wife, a mom, a survivor – and what was done to me was wrong. And I will keep telling the truth to protect every woman, every girl, every survivor now and for the future”
WORDS Paris Hilton Opens Up About Nude Video Leaking When She Was 19: “People Called It a Scandal. It Wasn’t. It Was Abuse” (People, 22/1/26)
Actor SAM CLAFLIN, age 39, “struggled with his self-image after working in Hollywood for 15 years and developing body dysmorphia because of the appearance-obsessed industry, saying: ‘I had a topless scene in one of my first movies, but it wasn’t in the script and I got told a week before they were going to [take] my top off.’
About this expectation of constant physical perfection he said:
‘I was like: “Shit, I haven’t been working out – what am I going to do?” This is my first introduction to the world.’
He can barely stand to see his own face onscreen: ‘I’m incredibly insecure. I just went to a screening of a film I was in and everyone [asked]: “How was it?” And [I was like:] “I hated it.” It’s my face
I don’t like.
There’s this Hollywood assumption that it’s the men with the
6-packs who sell the movie. So there was a pressure that was what I needed to look like.
As a result I developed a form of body dysmorphia. It wasn’t quite an eating disorder and I’m not blaming anyone but myself, but it was definitely because of the industry I’m in.
I’ve been massively affected [by body dysmorphia]. I’d say most guys are, but I would say mine got quite bad. It’s a real struggle. It’s like an everyday struggle. I am massively impacted by what other people think and if they think I look good.’
His deep sincerity about the difficulties of masculinity saw many viewers share how social expectations impact their self-image. One praised Claflin’s ‘brutal vulnerability’”
(Unilad, 5/2/26)
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• “Claflin says his body dysmorphia may have stemmed from his teen years because he hit ‘puberty late’ and didn’t feel ‘like
I was good-looking or strong enough’. When he couldn’t do a pull-up in phys ed he was ‘incredibly embarrassed’.
In 2017 he was body shamed on one job: ‘They literally made me pull my shirt up and were grabbing my fat and going: “You need to lose a bit of weight.”’ He ‘felt like a piece of meat’.
Claflin gets ‘nervous’ when he has to take his top off on set: ‘I get really worked up to the point where I spend hours in the gym and not eating for weeks to achieve what I think they’re going for’”
Musician GARY BARLOW, age 55, “opened up about his battle with an eating disorder in Netflix’s new Take That docuseries, sharing that he spent years trying to shed his boyband image when the group split.
Opening up about his bulimia struggles, Barlow said: ‘It was just so excruciating. You just wanted to crawl into a hole. There was a period of about 13 months when I didn’t leave the house once. And I also started to put weight on. The more weight I put on, the less people would recognise me.
I thought: ‘This is good, this is what I’ve been waiting for, living a normal life.’ So I went on a mission. If the food passed me, I’d just eat it… and I killed the pop star.
I would have these nights where I’d eat and eat and eat, but however I felt about myself, I felt 10 times worse the day after.’
Barlow said he developed an eating disorder in the 90s after his solo career failed to take off, admitting he was consumed with ‘jealousy’ over bandmate Robbie Williams’s success: ‘I was incredibly competitive, so yeah, I think I was jealous.’
He added: ‘I called him Blobby instead of Robbie one day – which, I hold my hands up, I shouldn’t have done.’
Detailing the start of his bingeing and purging cycle, he said: ‘One day I thought: “I’ve been out, it’s 10 o’clock, I’ve eaten too much – I need to get rid of this food.”
You just go off to a dark corner of the house and just throw up, just make yourself sick.
You think it’s only once and all of a sudden you’re walking down that corridor again and again – is this it? Is this what I’m going to be doing forever?’
In 2003 came ‘the day when I just went: “I’m not having this anymore. I’m going to change. I want to change and I’m determined that this is not who I’ve become.”
It only took a few years to get that low, but it took me years to get back to who I wanted to be. 10 years probably’”
WORDS Gary Barlow says he WANTED to be fat so he could have anonymity and “kill” his pop star persona after sharing unseen snaps from his bulimia battle (Daily Mail, 28/1/26)
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• “Not being recognised felt wonderful. The more weight I put on, the easier life became. Fat, I was invisible.
I’d go back to bed and lie awake… my heart racing, sore throat, worrying and overstimulated. I can never sleep after I’ve done it.
With every day and every binge, I am eating the pop star to death”
🌈 The documentary Give Me The Ball!, which premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, chronicles the life, legacy and “decades-long friendship of tennis champion BILLIE JEAN KING, age 82, and Rocket Man singer ELTON JOHN, age 78. Their bond deepened as they opened up about their shared struggles with sexuality and food addiction.
King says: ‘We confided in each other about how it was for each other and how hard it was to be gay. We talked a lot about that and how it was horrible hiding. What do you do? How do you figure it out?’
John says: ‘Billie Jean King being such a household name in sport and being gay, it was difficult. It was much easier for me. Everybody in the business knew I was gay. I mean, in show business, it’s not that big of a deal. It was much, much harder for her.’
About food addiction John says: ‘Those sorts of things take their toll and we had very honest conversations about food as an addictive substance. You have to eat to stay alive. I did other drugs, but the hardest drug to give up is food. We both suffered from that’”
WORDS Elton John Says He “Instantly Clicked” with Billie Jean King Over Shared Struggles with Food Addiction and Sexuality (People, 27/1/26)
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• In 2019 John “admitted his obsession with food was all-consuming. He said: ‘I was always rushing, always thinking about the next thing. If I was eating a curry, I couldn’t wait to throw it up so that I could have the next one.’
The singer has spoken before about simultaneously battling bulimia and addictions to cocaine, alcohol and sex.
King said on the podcast Wiser Than Me: ‘I’m a binge eater. Every morning I wake up, I tell myself I have an eating disorder. I still go to therapy. I still think about it’”
🌈 Ex Big 10 college football player JAKE ELDRIDGE, age 21, referenced the smash gay-hockey TV show Heated Rivalry with the recent TikTok caption: “When I watch Heated Rivalry, all I can think about is… how much it would have helped me.”
Eldridge says: “I spent so many years worrying about what people thought about me. Coming out should not even be a question.”
Revealing his sexuality in an emotional 2024 YouTube video, he said: “I went about my life for so long trying to fit a mould and hide who I was. It really, really wrecked me.”
He said about being “hospitalised with ulcerative colitis due to extreme levels of stress heightened by hiding his true self: ‘The stress, in my opinion, was me faking my life every day to please those around me rather than please myself. It was a part of myself that I knew but denied for years and years and years. And I think football for me kind of helped mask that. But football was also the reason I had to mask it’”
WORDS Jake Eldridge says Heated Rivalry might have helped him come out in American football: “I was faking my life every day” (Attitude, 6/2/26)
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• On being gay: “I knew from a young age. But football kind of pushed everything else aside. It felt like everything I’d worked for was finally coming true; at the same time, it felt like an imprisonment.
[At uni] my roommate said people were asking if I was gay. My biggest fear wasn’t just people knowing – it was people knowing before I was ready.
My parents were very accepting. They supported me the whole way”
• “The first time Eldridge considered coming out on the team felt like ‘jumping off a diving board’. So he stayed silent: ‘You don’t know if it’ll be a soft landing or if you’ll hit the pavement. Is my scholarship going to get taken? Am I going to play anymore? Am I going to get bullied to the point where I don’t want to be here? That was terrifying”
• On becoming ill: “It was the stress of being closeted – going in every day and faking who I am for years on end. I’d been saying for years: ‘This is making me sick.’ And then my body finally proved it”
• “I would love to see more and more people be out and be who they are while they're playing. At the same time, do it whenever you're comfortable. Not necessarily pressuring people to come out while they're playing, because football, whenever I was playing, was still very much not the most accepting.
Just do it on your own time and don’t listen to the noise of other people or feel pressured to explain to anybody who you love, why you love them. Live your life for you, not others. It’s one of the hardest things to do, but once you start, it’s one of the most rewarding”
🌈 Watching the hit show Heated Rivalry – about 2 male ice hockey players in a secret relationship – inspired hockey player JESSE KORTUEM, age 40 and from Minneapolis, to come out as gay. He believes the show, which went viral in 2026, “shows attitudes within the sport have shifted for the better.
Kortuem stepped away from playing at 17 as he felt he wouldn’t be accepted because of his sexuality. In 2017 he joined Cutting Edges, an LGBT-inclusive team that plays in North America.
Kortuem says: ‘I’m grateful for where my life has ended up. To finally have that relief – to bring 110% of myself into the locker room. Something was speaking to me through the show – I had to let something out.
People have reached out to say it inspired them to have the conversation with their parents. I’m honestly speechless.’
Seeing the show stirred repressed feelings: ‘I had to hide and looking back now it was tough. It was a place of comfort, but a place I had to edit myself.’
Like many LGBTQ+ amateur athletes, Kortuem has a nagging feeling that having to repress a part of his personality stopped him being his best and potentially cost him sporting opportunities: ‘But I’m now at peace. To have that pride on the ice, it feels like home.
It really hit me and a lot of gay athletes: our whole lives we were taught it was not OK to be gay. To see the show’s positive reception – not only from gay people but straight hockey fans – and watching them cheer on these queer hockey players really resonated, even if these are fictional characters who get this Cinderella story.
The sex part in the first 2 episodes might have been a bit much. I had to tell my 77-year-old parents to stick with the whole show. But hopefully it opens people’s minds. I wouldn’t want my 12-year-old niece watching it, but for it not to be edited down speaks volume about wanting to show positive representation of a love story’"
WORDS “Heated Rivalry inspired me to come out as gay” (BBC, 31/1/26)
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• From Kortuem’s coming out statement: “For a long time, the rink did not feel like a place where I could be all of me. I felt I had to hide parts of myself for far too long.
Growing up as the youngest of four boys in the #StateOfHockey (Minnesota), sports and competition were not just what we did. They were who we were. As a young teenager, I carried a weight that did not seem to fit into that world, and I lived in a constant state of dichotomy.
To my younger self, that identity could never be revealed. I did not think those two worlds could occupy the same person, let alone the same locker room. Coming out in the 2000s did not feel like an option, especially with so little positive representation in the media at the time and it would have been a social disaster at such a large high school. At 17, I walked away from the high school team and the brotherhood of hockey friendships I had developed from a young age…
I want to speak to the athletes out there who are still in the closet or struggling to find their way. I want you to know that there is hope and you’re not alone. There is a life and a deep happiness waiting for you on your path. You will get through this, and it is going to be OK”
🌈 Singer TROYE SIVAN, age 30, is ”reclaiming the narrative after
a TikTok doctor dissected his appearance and suggested he have cosmetic procedures. Sivan posted on Substack: ‘I oscillate constantly between feeling like i’m aging in a good way, getting “sexier” with time, then feeling like gollum’s very close pop-singing relative. So decrepit, somehow both skinny and fat at the same time. I’ve struggled with my body image for a lot of my life, as i’m sure most people have.
I’m historically famously skinny and i’m not THAT skinny anymore. I’m historically famously twinky (I am still the google search result image for twink), and i’m not THAT twinky anymore. Oy vey.’
His reaction to online scrutiny – Prong #1: ‘I am body positive to my core and believe that every body is beautiful. I’m grateful for mine (and yours, sexy) and that it allows me to do all the things I want to, free of pain and illness. It’s also cool to age.’
He was told by ‘a person at the very top of the fashion world: stay ugly. That essentially means: ‘Don’t f*** with your face.’
On going to the gym and following a nutrition plan since December: ‘I’ve been getting bigger — still lean, but more muscley, defined and toned. Sometimes I’ll run my hands over my chest and feel like it belongs to someone else.’
But he has often criticised himself and dabbled with the idea of nips and tweaks while saying they can be ‘dangerous’ and turn out ‘bad’. He had a consultation about getting a fat transfer to the under-eyes: ‘I really don’t want that frozen look but I do notice my “elevens” are starting to show even when i’m not frowning.
Hearing this unsolicited medical advice given publicly by a doctor I do not know pushed me toward Prong #2 for a fair few days. My all-knowing and evil algorithm saw the opportunity in this moment of vulnerability and pulled every lever. I saw video after video of deep plane face lift recoveries and ads for unapproved GLP-1 meds in pill form (I weigh 59kg).’
The doctor deleted his video and apologised”
WORDS Troye Sivan Speaks Out After TikTok Doctor Gives Unsolicited Plastic Surgery Advice: “Every Body Is Beautiful” (US Weekly, 22/1/26)
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• “I like my body and I think that makes some people uncomfortable”
• “Having reservations about being the right age to start getting Baby Botox, Troye candidly said: ‘I guess if i’m backlit, or only show the half of my face where the volume loss under my eyes is less pronounced (my right side is worse than my left) and angle my phone up high above my head and look up sort of doe-eyed, I can kind of still look the same as I did 5 or 6 years ago. The cracks are starting to show though’”