Aspen’s world-class skiing and expensive retail radiates privilege. As a result, the wealthy flock to Aspen, including prominent personalities and icons of pop-culture. Despite the attention the celebrity visits provide, the reputation of locals from Aspen is being harmed.

For several years, regular visitors such as Paris Hilton have visited Aspen to ski and admire the beauty, but more importantly, to maintain their status. The Aspen culture has adopted a reputation of snobbery because of the affluent tourists known to crowd Aspen’s streets in their thousand dollar, exotic fur coats. Consequently, Aspen has become a blatant symbol of the elite.

It isn’t uncommon to see or meet your favorite celebrity on the ski slopes or in Aspen, but they are some of the people who give aspen a bad reputation.

“When I met Justin Bieber, it seemed like he lost his sense of reality to the point where he was even rude towards the people who helped him get where he is. Aspen gets the reputation that all people are wealthy and act that way towards one another, which isn’t the case,” said AHS freshman Ashley Soderberg.

Paris Hilton, who recently visited Aspen for Christmas, posted a variety of photos of her skiing and modeling in designer ski outfits. A picture Hilton posted on Instagram on December 23^rd of her posing in ski attire is captioned “#aspenbarbie.”This description summarizes the stereotypical life of a perfect, beautiful and carefree Aspenite: a Barbie. Excessive immersion in this type of environment results in the mentality that this is Aspen’s norm. This type of attention makes it seem like Aspen is a town without working class people, and replaces it with the idea that Aspen is some type of dream world where the trust funds are as abundant as the fresh powder.

Kris Jenner, a figure of the life of wealth and opportunity, the mother of Kim Kardashian as well as a star on the MTV reality TV show, “The Kardashians” took a one-day trip to Aspen for New Year’s Eve. She was photographed at Matsuhisa, a restaurant in Aspen. She posted many photos of her “working” in the kitchen and eating there, causing Matsuhisa to appear like the typical hangout for an Aspenite. This puts Aspen in a false perspective as many working class families cannot afford dinner at Matsuhisa.

Excessive fame has brought Aspen a bad reputation, resulting in rivalry between many neighboring towns and competing ski resorts, such as Vail. What many do not realize is that despite the wealth brought to Aspen, not everyone is a millionaire or recently had their life aired on TV. Like any other town, Aspen has an abundant middle class, which many seem to forget. Representing the middle and working class, the true Aspen is something we can all do through kind actions as little as holding open a door for the people behind us. Hopefully, in the near future, people will become aware of the real Aspen and the locals will become a bigger part of the Aspen culture.