Perfection is a beast. Especially among the famous and those slouching toward fame’s pitiless spotlight.
Let’s begin with Catherine, Princess of Wales, who highlighted, in her own clumsy way, the complicated rules that govern celebrity in a culture that doesn’t quite know how it feels about her kind. She’s reminded us that the desire for control is more like a troubling addiction than an asset. And that sometimes, a picture stirs only a single word: Why?
Catherine admitted to editing a family photograph that was supposed to reassure a befuddled public, desperate for information about her whereabouts and well-being ever since Kensington Palace announced in January that she had undergone some mysterious planned abdominal surgery that was unrelated to cancer but would have her out of commission for nearly two months. Instead of calming folks who have been agitated, the doctored photograph of her with the three children she shares with Prince William has caused all manner of hysteria. In part, this is because the Associated Press, along with other wire services that had distributed the image, issued a dire “kill” alert, advising its clients to remove the photograph from circulation. The use of jargon, like “kill” rather than simply saying “delete,” suggested that the picture was some kind of virulent monster that needed to be assassinated rather than a family portrait that wasn’t up to journalistic snuff.
But Catherine’s apology also had several gaping holes: What did she alter? And why? After all the agony the members of the British royal family have endured and inflicted, they consistently manage to dig a hole of their own making ever deeper — mostly because they just can’t decide how human they actually want to be, and thus how humanely they will ultimately be treated. Who exactly does a working royal work for, and what information do they owe their employer? Did the public really need to know about Catherine’s hyperemesis gravidarum during her pregnancies? Or did it have a right to that knowledge since the entirety of the royal business is founded on creating heirs? It’s hard to ascribe to these working royals all the usual bodily autonomy and personal privacy when they live their lives by a litany of inherited rules defining how their body will be revered, touched and exploited.
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In the age of digital images, people monkey around with photographs all the time, not just the ones they’re planning to send out as family holiday cards — or, in this case, make accessible to news wire services — but also the candid party pictures they upload to social media so the grandparents can get visual updates on the little ones. The constant fussing with pictures is a testament to our many addictions — to technology, to perfection, to control. We obsess over the images instead of simply delighting in them. If families scan their photo albums, the most memorable pictures are rarely the ones in which everyone is staring straight into the camera, eyes wide, smiles perfect. The photos that bring enduring joy tend to be those in which people’s quirks, mischievousness and even grumpiness come through.
What do we see when we look at any institutionally approved photograph, whether it’s a royal family or an American first family? We study those pictures searching for an errant detail that might reveal some hint of a truth, a symbol of something larger than the individuals in the frame. There’s a difference, of course, between the kind of fame experienced by members of the royal family and run-of-the-mill celebrity fame or political notoriety. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, made that point as she explained her failed attempt at settling in with her new in-laws. The working members of the royal family do a lot to remind their subjects that they very much are not like anyone else.
In Washington and Hollywood, part of the skill set of any politician or actor is in making a connection with the public, one that exploits common ground. It’s a performance that, if done well, feels warm and inviting and real. If done poorly, then one risks following in the steps of Katie Boyd Britt, the 42-year-old Alabama senator who gave the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union address from her soft-focus kitchen. Wearing a bedazzled cross and impeccable lip gloss while speaking in an emphatic whisper, Britt aimed to gather the American public close, as if over a healthy snack from the bowl of fruit displayed behind her. She described her most important job as being that of wife and mother — not the elected representative of 5 million people in Alabama. She smiled. She smiled as she told a horrifying and misleading story about sex trafficking. She never stopped smiling.
If one simply looked at her televised speech and plucked a single, silent frame from it, it’s a glorious picture. Britt is dressed in vivid green. That kitchen is decorated in inoffensive shades of taupe. It’s traditional but not stodgy. Modern but not slick. The image is perfect; the message is a sinkhole that just keeps getting bigger.
Anyone can understand the desire to control one’s image. The need to make sure one’s public persona is just so. But sometimes imperfection isn’t messy; it’s just real and wonderfully human.
Such a gesture came toward the end of the Oscars telecast, during Emma Stone’s acceptance speech for best actress. Emotional and flustered, but also supremely aware of her relationship with the public, Stone fretted and laughed and bemoaned her Louis Vuitton gown: The zipper on the back of the mint-colored peplum had popped. “My dress is broken,” she mouthed to presenter Sally Field. “My dress is broken,” she said to the audience in the theater and at home. “Don’t look at the back of my dress,” she said as she walked offstage with her golden statue.
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But, of course, people did look at the back of the dress that had been custom-made for Stone, one of the brand’s ambassadors. The gown was worth a fortune. People empathized with Stone. They chuckled at the craziness of it all. They finger-wagged Louis Vuitton for poor workmanship. Still, the image of Stone, with her back turned to the audience in dismay and chagrin, was a memorable one. It was another kind of picture, one that was messy, human and true.
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