You've come a long way, maybe: JonBenet, Diana, the princess fantasy, and what it has done to women

Washington Monthly, Nov, 1997 by Michelle Cottle

There I was, in my local bookstore, jockeying for position at the magazine racks with a dozen or so sharp-suited Hill staffers. Looking down, I noticed Ms. magazine's 25th anniversary issue. A giant "25 years" was splashed across the cover in hot-pink type, and the magazine's front flap boasted a long list of illustrious contributing writers, from Alice Walker to Bella Abzug to Gloria Steinem. I reached over to retrieve a copy, planning to spend the evening reveling in just how far my gender has come in the past few decades.

That's when I saw them: Yasmine Bleeth's breasts--larger than life, semi-clad in a black-lace teddy, and peering at me from the cover of Details. Snuggled up alongside the "Baywatch" beauty were two other prime-time mammas, equally voluptuous, equally unclad. In fact, upon closer examination I discovered that the photo was part of a three-page fold-out featuring eight shapely TV actresses, nestled together in groups of twos and threes, hair tousled, lips parted, all sporting a variety of black panties, garters, bras, slips, and so on. The cover line: "The Girls that Make You Lose Remote Control"

Suddenly, I wasn't so sure we'd come very far at all.

The confusion isn't mine alone. Despite--or, more accurately, as a result of--feminist strides, women now face an endless series of important "life decisions" Today, we must figure out how to balance not only the roles of sex goddess and domestic goddess, but also of Supreme Court Justice or Wall Street banker. And as our options increase, so does the confusion. Do we want to be Cokie Roberts or Julia Roberts? Elizabeth Dole or Elizabeth Hurley? To any self-respecting '90s woman, the choice seems obvious--but it's not. Even with our high-powered careers and corner offices, we can still be tempted by what writer Marjorie Williams has dubbed "the seductions of dependence," the allure of being placed on a pedestal and taken care of by Prince Charming. And even as we decry being treated like sex objects and valued for our looks, girdles are making a comeback and beneath a surprising number of those Ann Taylor suits lurks a Wonderbra.

Perhaps for this reason, women more than men seem to search for glimpses of ourselves in public figures--movie stars, athletes, even those sad and sorry creatures on the afternoon talk shows. We strain to see how the central conflicts and questions in our lives are being played out in the lives of the famous and the infamous. Thus, Anita Hill becomes the champion of every woman who has felt powerless to alter a bad work situation, while Oprah's eternal battle of the bulge reassures us that even the rich and glamorous have their demons.

As the end of 1997 fast approaches, two females stand out as the year's undisputed headliners in the public--and particularly the feminine--imagination: JonBenet Ramsey and Diana, Princess of Wales. Save for both figures having achieved icon status, the two seemingly had little in common in life, and even less in death: a 6-year-old beauty queen found murdered in her parents' basement, the most famous woman in the world killed in a car chase through the streets of Paris. Yet both females represented an embrace of traditional definitions of femininity. Both had pursued, and to some extent achieved, the Once-upon-a-time fantasy of becoming a beautiful fairy princess; both were celebrated for and heavily defined by their physical beauty and charm. And both, despite JonBenet's youth, embodied the dual nature of Woman as The Virgin and The Whore, that nebulous combination of innocence and sexuality that has long titillated Man. (Note that inside the aforementioned Details was another photo spread of the eight women, this time garbed all in white lingerie. Don't think the symbolism was lost on the editors.) To some extent, JonBenet and Diana stood for everything that feminism has been fighting against for the last 30 years. They served as a reminder that such unfashionably "unliberated" values still hold sway in the lives of countless girls and women.

Daddy's Little Princess

Even had she not been murdered,JonBenet Ramsey might still have become a household name. She was, after all, in training to be a star. Born into a family of beautiful, charming Southern belles (her mother had made it all the way to the Miss America contest), JonBenet was, by age six, a veteran on the kiddie pageant circuit. The precocious tot's combination of looks and charm had already won her the crown of Little Miss Colorado, along with a host of lesser-known titles. Like other mini beauty queens before her, JonBenet might have ridden the pageant wave to a career in child modeling or acting.

But JonBenet's "might haves" ended in the predawn hours of December 26, 1996. Not long after parents Patsy and John Ramsey phoned police to report both their daughter missing and their discovery of a note demanding $118,000 for her safe return, JonBenet's crumpled body was found in a hidden corner of the basement in her family's Boulder, Co., home. The grisly details of the murder were guaranteed to make the national news: The child's tiny skull was fractured; she had duct tape across her mouth and a homemade garrote around her throat; and, most shockingly, her body bore signs of possible sexual assault. Soon everyone from Geraldo to The New York Times was looking into "the JonBenet story." As the media tsunami gained speed, critics carped that the crime would not have received such attention had the little victim been poor or black. True. But what really made JonBenet an object of irresistible, morbid fascination for the American public were those photographs.