Paris Dreams of Simple Life in New Book

By Todd Peterson

08/27/2004 at 08:00 AM EDT

Don't be fooled by her Simple Life act – being an heiress isn't always easy.

That's the case Paris Hilton makes in her new memoir, Confessions of an Heiress: A Tongue-in-Chic Peek Behind the Pose, due in stores on Sept. 7. Excerpts from the book appear in the latest issue of PEOPLE, now on newsstands.

Among the hardships suffered by Hilton: a lack of credit. "The rumor is that I got a credit card at age 9, which is ridiculous. It was more like 19, and I had to get one myself without my parents," she writes.

Nonetheless, Hilton categorizes her family as "really close," and says that her upbringing was actually quite sheltered.

And, like the rest of us, she admits to suffering through thoughts of self-doubt: "It was so embarrassing being flat-chested that I wore padded bras until I was 17," Hilton says. That is, until she realized that being smaller on top "looks better in clothes."

But for all of the attention-grabbing headlines she has created over the last couple years, Hilton says that she is looking forward to a much simpler life. "I don't always want the glamorous, jet-set life," she writes. "Someday soon, I want to have children and a big house with a lot of animals – like my parents had."