It might only be a missing ring or an old photo spliced up for today’s headlines, but the photoshopping Kensington Palace has let Paddington out of the bag. We are regularly told lies. Lies to make us happy, lies to make us admire people, and lies of omission to hide things we should know about.
When you make the head of state and their family celebrities, the press machine must be fed. Because all those pictures of smiling and beautifully attired people drive engagement and sales, they are clickbait in our media world where so much else is just bloody miserable. Britain is officially the second most miserable country in the world.
The illusion of royalty
For decades the Palace press relations machine has fed us pictures of people with whom we can project and fantasise about what we want to be. Aside from older royals in constitutional positions, the preference is for the young and the pretty, not the old, the tired, the dodgy or even the solid second tier performers like Princess Anne. Unless they are the pantomime villains, only the beautiful people are allowed out on the newsstands. Plus, they should have few opinions besides children and be kind to the planet and animals but still wear expensive togs.
In the words of another icon of impossible beauty standards, Taylor Swift:
“You’re a queen selling dreams, selling makeup and magazines.”
The human version of those Disney princesses that weave in and out of our childhood dreams. They make commerce go around and make us believe that buying something, even if it’s only lipstick, will improve our lives. Until the retail hit is spent and you need the next thing to buy.
Then again, building an image of a perfect family has always been a gamble. Think Queen Victoria losing her Albert too soon. Then there have been the divorcees, the rogues, the wandering hands, the spendthrifts and the simply too boring. So, the camera seeks out those who meet the ideal. Those that are slim, beautiful, obedient and bland.
Image vs truth
But sometimes the image slips, the humans get ill, fall in love in the wrong place or are angry, or simply they disappoint us. Kate may just be sallow and gaunt from illness or maybe she just can’t fit into those skinny jeans like a 20-year-old right now. Or maybe she wants to lie down in a darkened room and not come out looking ‘fragrant and polished’. She may simply have had enough of a bit of holding the whole show together.
I don’t know, and neither will you. That is the whole point.
The truth was lost when we believed in fairy princesses and princes who could kiss and make it all better. If Prince Harry’s written therapy had told us anything, it is that even their reality is not perfect. Think Diana using her photoshoots to showcase her empty marriage. The late Queen’s hats signalling illicit personal political opinions or HM Charles III’s choice of ties. So, let’s grow up and remember that nothing can be sorted by a fresh picture of a woman wearing a tiara. Their story will never ‘make it all better’.
Let me say that I wish them all well. Looking at endless images of royal folk over the decades of my life makes me think of primates in zoos but with better surroundings. So, like watching orangutans in captivity, I would like to liberate the whole lot of them. Simply on human rights grounds.
Then the royals would have what money can’t buy them – a private life. The ability to go out and literally no one would care. So then being ill and bloated or heartbroken or simply depressed would be no one’s business but their own. The choice to post a selfie would then truly be their own.
