Ten Reasons Lady Di Was a Revolutionary Princess
On the 15th anniversary of the death of Diana of Wales in Paris we remember why she was a unique princess.
-She showed herself publicly as a mother. William, the first heir to the British throne to be born in a hospital, traveled with his parents shortly after birth on an official visit to Australia and New Zealand. Lady Di's decision sparked criticism from the more traditional press. She acknowledged having suffered postpartum depression, forced her children to queue at Marks and Spencer, to pay with their pay money, and traveled with them on a trip to Disneyworld. "There are no side effects in hugging," she used to say about her relationship with her children.
-Broken the dress codes of British royalty. She wore black to official functions (until then it was reserved for funerals) and dresses inspired by Elvis. The jewels fascinated him but he wore them without giving them too much importance: he wore a pearl necklace falling down his back and a hippy ribbon-style choker on his forehead. She dared to wear a conspicuously sexy designer of Italian nationality like Versace and made friends with him. It was a royal approach to the catwalks.
-It introduced the emotional in her role. She touched AIDS patients when little was known about the disease, she sat with her back to the camera when she went to visit the sick to have the patient's full attention. She visited drug addicts, homeless people, prisoners. She was the human face of the British crown. After his death, Queen Elizabeth was forced to show her feelings. "She was manipulative like me," Tony Blair said of her power to use other people's emotions.
-A natural attitude mattered in the royal house. She wore jeans and baseball caps, tied her sweater over her shoulders, took off her shoes in the park at her children's school. And she took official photos with Hunter wellies on her honeymoon. Many contemporary princesses wouldn't have flirted with sporty attire if Lady Di hadn't set the stage.
-He took on British ministers, the US government and NATO over her campaign to eradicate antipersonnel mines. Some conservative ministers called it a "loose cannon", "reckless" and "not useful and unrealistic." When the Labor government came to power, it signed the Ottawa treaty against antipersonnel mines before the first anniversary of her death.
-She was the first modern princess with celebrity status. A friend of Michael Jackson and Elton John, she danced with John Travolta and dated Liza Minnelli. The press followed her wherever she went, they photographed her in a bikini: she marks a before and after in the paparazzi culture. Although she was distressed by the harassment of the press and went so far as to say that it was seen as "a product that sells well", she herself summoned the photographers and even spoke with them about how they had taken it.
- It was the first royal that was presented showing her underwear. When her courtship with Carlos was announced, the photographers took a portrait of her outside the nursery where she worked. Her summery skirt, seemingly demure, against the light played a trick on her.
In a reverse twist to the one Grace Kelly's life took, Lady Di was a princess who dreamed of being a movie star. Kevin Costner has stated that the Princess of Wales asked him before he died to star in the sequel to the film The Bodyguard.
-Despite being married to the heir to the British throne, she aired her husband's infidelities, avoiding the traditional attitude of shutting up and looking the other way. As if that were not enough, she did it on a BBC program during which she also admitted to having had an affair.
-She spoke with a commoner accent very different from Received Pronuntiation (RP), the pronunciation of the ruling and privileged classes and of course her husband the Prince of Wales. Her accent with glottal stop, appropriated elements of the cockney neighborhoods of London and moved away from the closed aristocratic circles. Many upper-class girls imitated her.
