An Inconvenient Woman

They want her dead

When Princess Diana died, newspapers/the media made a LOT of money. Diana made the media a ton of money in life – I’m American, and in high school I worked at the public library; I sought out the endless magazines and newspapers from our collection to read about her. I watched the wedding in August 1981, the morning before I went off to work. I was on an exercise bike the night she died, already watching CNN, so of course (as a media junkie) I caught the news in the moment. The middle of the night in European time was after dinner in American time.

British tabloids made a load when she died – even more when they bullied the royal family into stopping their care for Diana’s sons in favor of coming to London and showing their faces instead. I do think some form of that should have happened, because obviously the public demanded it (but the question is, how badly were the public manipulated by the tabloids?) – I don’t know that it had to be the boys themselves. Who would want that for their kids? Why should they perform; why should they work? They were in grief. Their mental health – their very sanity – was sacrified to make other people feel better. That’s a crime. And nobody recovers fully from that.

When Meghan Markle arrived on the royal scene, media sales/clicks shot up. She was unusual! American, biracial (with all the complexity that implies), self-made and extremely able to take care of herself. And when it became clear that more sacrifice was needed – their charities needed to have less money, their causes needed to take in fewer resources – because they needed to take a back seat to others with higher rank and less of an interest in anything that actually matters…Well, they left. There’s a whole book out there about why that happened.

As an amateur royal-watcher over the years, it has become so clear to me that the press has been ginning up another campaign, just as they did with Diana. Women are, after all, meant to be sacrificed to appease the gods – of misogyny, of patriarchy, of the misogynistic and patriarchal media. Dead women sell papers – or clicks, as it were. Persecuted, reviled women are good for business (and thank you, Anna Pasternak, for taking that whole project on) – especially now that we have comments sections that rage, unmoderated, with conspiracy theories (her kids aren’t real! Her pregnancy wasn’t real! She’s a whore! She’s a harridan, who’s got her claws firmly in her prince, who is too dumb or cunt-struck to notice!)

None of this is new. In fact, it’s…normal. Consider Eve, in the Garden of Eden, who I guess must have bewitched Adam to eat the apple, because in that story he’s as stupid as it gets, no will of his own. In doing so, she brought destruction and pain and death into the world, so women deserve the excruciating pain of labor and delivery because it was all a woman’s fault. In doing so, she brought expulsion from heaven on earth, and endless toil and suffering.

Consider Pandora, who opened a box out of curiosity and let countless tribulations loose on the world – so women should not be curious. Is Hope, the last entity out of the box, worth all the tsuris?

Consider Mary Magdalene, libeled as a prostitute because she had the nerve to be close to Jesus and travel with him as he ministered. Because she had the nerve to be a witness to both his execution and his resurrection – first on the scene, even. How dare a woman be welcomed into greatness.

Consider witches, throughout history. We now know that many were inconvenient to those in power at the time. Women who owned land, who needed to be dispossessed of it lest other women get ideas. Women who experimented with herbs and cures, accused by others who were jealous of their knowledge. Women who just wanted to be left the fuck alone, which outraged their communities who insisted that everyone toe the line. To say nothing of enslaved women who were scapegoats and opportune targets.

And in our age, consider Amber Heard, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris. All the conspiracies, the hisses and whispers and pointed implications that stop just short of outright accusations….

Women aren’t humans, in the eyes of the media. We are metaphors. At my age, I’m accustomed to not being human. Hell, I’m accustomed to not being seen. So invisible, in middle age, that people walk right into me on the sidewalk. (True story! More than once!)

As a woman, as a metaphor, I’m obviously an object to be reacted against, a maternal-like figure whose affability and sere-dry sense of humor temper the obvious dangers I represent – chaos, caprice, unpredictability, uncertainty, “we just don’t know what she’s going to do”. I’ve been called “unreliable”. Which is not true – I merely do what I want, when I want to, and just because that might not be predictable to an outsider doesn’t mean I can’t be relied upon. And yes, I forget things, drop things, make mistakes – again, that only makes me human, not a flighty, disappointing goddess-mother who rides on the wind wherever it blows.

If there were a comments section to my life, it would look a lot like those comments after articles about Meghan Markle, or Amber Heard, or Hillary Clinton, or Kamala Harris. I think that is true of most women. Because we have the temerity not to be mere dolls who can be posed in any way a situation demands. We have the temerity to fuck up…just like everybody else on this planet. We have the temerity to be imperfect.

The media finds this unacceptable – for profit. Scolding makes money. Confabulating a campaign of hatred makes money. The media knows there are bad actors who read their papers, who watch their shows, who listen to their podcasts. Entire industries are built around hating this beautiful, accomplished woman or that one. YouTube alone has a multitude of Meghan- or Amber-haters who monetize their channels with obvious lies and whisper campaigns.

And should one of those haters inspire someone to act…badly, or inspire a paparazzi frenzy to interfere with a car drive, well, the results will be a bonanza of cash for all media outlets, large and small, corporate and independent. An absolute windfall.

The lessons the media learned from the death of Diana were all the wrong ones. And they set a precedent. If we can drive a woman insane with paranoia, paranoia that’s the result of a multitude of betrayals and whisper campaigns, then she might die – through her own hand or, by making her a target, someone else’s. And if she dies, we’ll make a bucketload. Very convenient.

Meghan came close. Many of us come close – depression comes for you regardless of class or wealth or position on the fame ladder. There are those who deny even that – and by doing so, again deny her humanity. Such denials are a tease, meant to be met with proof: “I’ll show you I wasn’t kidding.” As with Caroline Flack, more money for the media!

Meghan ultimately didn’t fall for that trap. But make no mistake – the media’s not done with her. They won’t be done with her, until she’s dead and they’ve made their money.