Her Beauty Frozen In Time, Diana is Finally Protected From the Tabloids. Lara Flynn Boyle Can't Say the Same
IT DOESN'T SEEM POSSIBLE THAT IN THE 10 YEARS SINCE PRINCESS DIANA'S TRAGIC DEATH INSIDE A PARIS TUNNEL that tabloid editors could have become crueler. But I'd make the case they have.
As Britain wraps up its six-month investigation into whether the royals conspired to kill the former wife of Prince Charles, the world revisits the fairy tale-gone-awry of a young girl who married her prince. I remember vividly my own personal shock when the news broke that Princess Diana had died in a car accident on August 31, 1997 fleeing papparazzi with her beau of the moment, Dodi al-Fayed. I also remember the callous thought that ran through my head soon afterwards: that the beautiful princess was better off dead. After all, a picture-perfect princess doesn't come marred with scars. And it would have been painful to have watched Diana's power, her hold on the public's imagination, slip away.
Diana was enslaved by the spotlight for a simple reason: she was magic on camera. She was spellbinding through a lens and the world couldn't get enough of her. Yet even the most beautiful woman loses her allure to age and decline. That reality particularly escapes no one in the public arena no matter how much exotic creams, plastic surgery and botox they can afford. The tabloids had mocked Diana about a dimple of cellulite; what might they have said if she had had scars and a limp?
The cruelness of the tabloids and their impossible expectations for the women of La La Land is on display as the tab predators target Lara Flynn Boyle for having a puffy face. "Puffy cheeks, drooping jowls... just what has happened to Lara Flynn Boyle's face?,'' asks the U.K.'s Daily Mail near another photo of Goldie Hawn with the caption that "age catches up" with the actress. The article on Boyle proceeds to say that "the 38-year-old's bloated face, drooping jowls and bursting trout pout rendered her almost unrecognisable from the actress who first shot to fame in director David Lynch's cult television series Twin Peaks." That series hit the airwaves 18 years ago! After which time Lara was rumored to suffer from severe anorexia. I'm glad to see she's put on weight. But I guess Lara should have had the good sense to have died in a car accident. Then she would never have to face the horrors of aging in the tabloids' eyes.
Posted April 1, 2008
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