Socialite Paris Hilton (L) presents flowers to Miss Turkey 2008 Leyla Lydia Tugutlu during Miss Turkey 2008 beauty pageant in Istanbul, March 27, 2008. [Agencie]

Paris Hilton, the celebrity and hotel heiress who spent a stint in jail last year, said on Thursday she sees herself as a role model for young women as she prepared to judge a contest to crown Miss Turkey.

Hilton, who will sit on a jury to select Miss Turkey 2008, said she valued not only beauty but also "good heart" when looking at the contestants' attributes.

"This is my first time judging anything like this," she said. "I'm going to look at how the girls carry themselves, what they look like, the way they dress and what they say."

It might seem ironic that Hilton, 27, sees herself as a role model and is judging what other women will say about their lives and futures. She starred in U.S. reality TV show "The Simple Life" portraying herself as a rich girl overcome by the boring routine of daily, middle-class life.

Hilton earned a lot of unwanted publicity in 2003 after an amateur sex video of her hit the Internet, and spent three weeks in a Los Angeles last year in a drunken driving case.