Will we ever have a middle ground?
Nothing screams unnecessary like a photo of a princess being groped.
The Sun newspaper trailed Princess Eugenie of York while she was on her gap year holiday in Thailand. She was wearing a bikini while out on the beaches of Phuket, and the photographers went crazy snapping photo after photo. The result was a Sun headline entitled “They’re Euge!” over a photo of the Queen’s granddaughter having her breasts squeezed by a companion.
It never fails to amaze me how much the media intrudes into private royal life. Yes, being royal means you are a public figure, but sometimes people need some breathing room. A person can’t be “on” at all hours of the day and don’t want a photographer breathing down their necks when taking a rest.
As a feminine version of Robin Hood
Not only do the media show disrespect to royal privacy, but they’re crude about it, too. Are we to blame for the intrusion because of our need for royal news and scandal, or is it the media’s responsibility to walk a reasonable middle ground?
I recently obtained a copy of Kitty Kelley’s book “The Royals” on audio cassette. I’m currently listening to it in the car as I drive, and though some may think me a bit mad to listen to Kelley’s fulmination, I find many things insightful.
Kelley discusses a time when biographer Anthony Holden was writing a book about Prince Charles’ earliest years. Holden’s biography of the prince stated that Princess Elizabeth decided to breast-feed her new baby son rather than let a wet nurse do it. The Prince’s press secretary (at the time of the writing) was aghast when he read this in the manuscript and called Holden at once to admonish him.
“The sentence about breast-feeding must be deleted. Absolutely and at once.” When Holden asked why, the press secretary adamantly stated that “One never mentions the royal breasts,” and that “[...] the royal breasts must never be exposed.”
Both Anthony Holden and Kitty Kelley chuckled about the man being ‘prudish’. So what do the two authors make of The Sun newspaper trailing Princess Eugenie while she frolics in a bikini? Exposing the royal breasts, indeed.
So the press secretary was probably a little too restricted, but people like The Sun’s staff are far too crude and invasive. Will we ever have a middle ground? At this moment, Dutch Prince Willem-Alexander and his Argentine-born wife Princess Maxima are taking The Associated Press to court. They claim the news agency breached the Dutch Mediacode by distributing photos of their recent vacation in Argentina. The Dutch Royals decided to take advantage of the Argentine winter to go on a skiing holiday and catch up with Princess Maxima’s family. They gave the media their time by posing on a beach in Holland with their three daughters. In exchange, the press would leave them alone during their South American trip.
Not pleased
Suffice it to say, that didn’t happen. Now the royal family is in an uproar and there are legal proceedings. The photographers didn’t snap anything risque like the bikini-clad Eugenie, but the invasion was just as unnecessary and disrespectful.
Why can’t a compromise be honored? Think of all the aggravation that could have been avoided for all parties had the media acquiesced to the simple royal request: take these photos now, then let us have our private time.
Since the days of Diana in the 1980s, the dynamic between photographer and royal subject has become kill or be killed; hunter and hunted. The respect is almost nil, replaced instead by an in-your-face attitude. When will it end?
