The cover you thought you'd never see...

I admit to being a bit of a British Royal Family tragic.  I adored Princess Diana, I knew that we would be close friends if we had ever met because I just got her.  Actually I realise that this was part of her attraction, everyone just felt like they got her – she was the People’s Princess for a reason.

When Kate and William got married my obsession with the royal family deepened. I just knew that Kate and I would do great coffee together, I got her too. I felt a huge gush of pride and admiration for her when she married her Prince and subsequently when I saw pictures of her doing her own grocery shopping and refusing to wear a dress just once.  I know that I wasn’t alone in wondering what Princess Di would think and I heard my own thoughts and questions echoed in the voices of the media and the public at large.

Everyone was wistful for Princess Di and I believe that to imagine how happy and proud she would have been is normal, and in some way self comforting.  We all want to imagine a happier ending to Diana’s life.

But to create that future? To take that image out of your mind’s eye and put it to the world IN PRINT. I think that’s not just deluded, I think it is creepy.

A  mocked-up image of Princess Di walking with Kate Middleton graces the cover of Newsweek to mark the 50^th birthday of Diana (1 July)   It accompanies an article by Tina Brown about what Diana would have been like if she were alive today.

The picture is bad. Offensive. Dismissive of the feelings of the surviving members of the Royal Family.

But the copy? Here is just an extract:

“There is no doubt she would have kept her chin taut with strategic Botox shots and her bare arms buff from the gym. Remarriage? At least two, I suspect, on both sides of the Atlantic. Always so professional herself, she would have soon grown exasperated with Dodi Al-Fayed’s hopeless unreliability. After the breakup I see her moving to her favorite city, New York, spending a few cocooned years safely married to a super-rich hedge-fund guy who could provide her with what she called “all the toys”: the plane, the private island, the security detail. Gliding sleekly into her 40s, her romantic taste would have moved to men of power over boys of play.”

And just when you think that they can’t stoop any lower – an imagined Facebook profile for Diana.  Her Facebook shows Diana as a fan of Colin Firth films and friends with Bono, Sarah Ferguson and Camilla Parker-Bowles. Because they totally have no regard for well, anyone in the Royal Family.

Most media outlets are a little stunned as to the cover – The Los Angeles Times headline said: “Newsweek’s ‘Diana at 50’ cover: Shocking, brilliant or just plain cheap?”‘  Lizze Manning from Mediaite said to create such a “bizarre” photograph was hurtful to Princess Diana’s children. “Her death was devastating: an abrupt tragedy. But, it happened. To pretend like it didn’t is disrespectful on so many levels.”

But  Associated Press said the cover was a “ghostly sight”, and quoted a statement from Ms Brown defending the image. “We wanted to bring the memory of Diana alive in a vivid image that transcends time and reflects my piece”.  Vanity Fair magazine, which Ms Brown used to edit, naturally took a lighter look at the cover with the headline: “Exhumed Royalty Watch: If You Thought Newsweek’s ‘Diana at 50’ Cover Was Offensive…” A lighter look perhaps because their website has mocked up a fake cover for their September issue, showing Princes William and Harry posing with King James II, who would be over 300-years-old today. Yay, can’t wait to read that one!

Mia writes: “I’m not sure I agree that it’s so offensive. Isn’t it interesting how we can have such strong feelings about Diana almost 14 years after she died? I do feel much the same way about her as Lana. I too believe we would have been close friends. I think she was a deeply complex and in some ways tragic figure, a real relic of a specific time. The monarchy – and indeed the world – has come a long way since then.

Just look at the way Kate Middleton and Prince William lived together for years before they were married, while Diana was 19 and a virgin when she got engaged to Prince Charles – it was compulsory to be one if you were to be the future queen. Imagine that. Anyway. I read Tina Brown’s excellent biography of Diana – I highly recommend it if you are a Diana-phile or even if you’re not. Tina Brown (former editor of Vanity Fair) is almost as interesting as the late Princess.

But digitally aging dead celebrities is not new. How many of those photos of Marilyn Monroe have we seen? Is it worse because she had no kids and so much of the pathos around Diana’s death were the images and spectre of her grieving sons?
As far as the words go, I have myself often speculated about what Diana would be like now. I have even written about it. She was always so iconic that whatever she did would have been hugely ‘of the time’.

The idea of social media is a potent one. Diana was a master manipulator of the media and her public image and I reckon she would have been a adept user of it to further her charity work as well as her ‘brand’. She may even have had some kind of reality show. And botox? I reckon for sure. Is it insulting to speculate about the dead? Is it insensitive to wonder how Diana’s life would have turned out and how she would have looked at lived at 50? I don’t think so.

I think she would have in fact loved still being talked about and immortalised more than a decade after she died. There’s something interesting about celebrities who die at the peak of their fame – like James Dean and Kurt Cobain and Marilyn and Diana. It’s like they are frozen in time. That’s not a bad thing but neither is wondering how they would have adapted to a changed world … what do you think?”

Has the media gone too far or is Newsweek just putting to paper what everyone else is thinking ?