Anyone who doubts that women's lives are particularly complex, or that the media are profoundly and viscerally sexist, should have paid more attention during the media frenzy of the past month. The coverage of the life, death, and last rites of Princess Diana is as powerful a statement of sexism as we've seen in years.
Some feminists' rhetoric is among the most tiresome and obnoxious in our political spectrum. Some elements of feminism have advanced noxious political correctness, chilling open discussion and impeding the free flow of ideas.
But more than two weeks after Diana's death, it's clear that these are minor faults in a movement that, if anything, has been restrained and understated.
The whirlwind of coverage has underscored in the most basic way that women are held to different standards than men, that they're defined by the men in their lives more than by their own accomplishments, that women of real accomplishment receive little attention while glamorous women receive tons, and that the media lusts so shamelessly for beauty that the prospects facing young women who grow up watching TV can sometimes seem almost heartbreakingly hopeless.
In contemporary media, looking good on television is the most celebrated trait on earth. The rest of one's life is far less important.
No world figure in recent memory has received the sort of universal adoration being accorded the late Princess of Wales, and few public figures have garnered so much attention for such superficial reasons.
That she was a caring and charitable person and a warm mother seems clear enough. That her life and works have been distorted and exaggerated out of all proportion to reality is even clearer. And that she was a beautiful and glamorous young cover girl is the heart of the reason.
Would the coverage be anything remotely like this if she'd been overweight, frowsy, or middle-aged? While the less telegenic and far from media-savvy Sarah Ferguson, parallel victim of the royal family, hustles cranberry juice and promotes Weight Watchers, Diana amassed a multimillion dollar fortune, retained a palace, and cruised the Mediterranean.
If Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a woman of genuine accomplishment, were to die in a tragic and unexpected way, would she get a two-hour special hosted by Peter Jennings, featuring a tearful Barbara Walters and a mournful Diane Sawyer? Would Dan Rather rush from his anchor desk to cover her funeral live for hours? What would the specials be like on Hillary Rodham Clinton, an accomplished attorney and a loving mother in her own right?
What are younger women to make of the worldwide celebration of this affluent young figure - an apparently likable, good-hearted, and charismatic person who wanted to use some of her power for good ends but whose primary achievement in life was marrying a monarch-to-be, waging a brilliant public relations war against him and his family when they divorced, and cannily manipulating her media image thereafter?
Diana's story is, in fact, a classic fairy tale, no part of it more vivid or compelling than the stand-off between this strikingly beautiful princess and her dour and frumpy mother-in-law. In media terms, of course, it's no contest at all, as the house of Windsor learned once again this month.
Women are, in fact, treated differently from men in media, with beauty, style, and glamour elevated above all other traits.
Although fawning journalists praised her for coming into her own and redefining herself (passages that millions of lesser-knowns accomplish without fanfare and under much more difficult circumstances every day - it's called growing up), her real power derived from the coverage she attracted for her lifestyle and her relationships with men.
In the weeks before her death, the tabloid frenzy that drew all those paparazzi was her love affair with a billionaire's son.
Famous men are simply not presented in this way. But then, few men are famous simply for their looks and their marriages. The implication for women is clear enough: The way to be adored, celebrated, even worshipped, and to be become wealthy and powerful is to a) marry somebody important; b) divorce him, if it comes to that, on tough terms; and c) dazzle reporters, editors, and photographers with beauty, charm, and a continuously evolving sense of fashion. Even with the charity balls and the photo ops for worthy causes, it's a thin résumé.
People had the right to watch as much or as little Diana coverage as they wished. But it's an ugly stain on much of journalism that her life and the context in which it was lived is so thoughtlessly and shallowly portrayed.
This article appeared originally in HotWired.
