Last year Hilary Mantel wrote in the London Review of Books about the Duchess of Cambridge’s public image, referring to her having the persona of “a shop-window mannequin”.
Now Spain’s queen has come under the scrutiny of Suzy Menkes in Vogue: “I gazed at the photo of the new Spanish queen, Letizia … I felt like weeping,” says the magazine’s international editor. “I felt the same chagrin that I do for all this generation of European princesses, who are smart, intelligent, chosen for love, not their blue blood — yet destined to be seen as nothing but coathangers.
“Letizia, visiting the Prado Museum in Madrid this week, in her first official role as Queen, looked super-slender,” she goes on. “But seeing her in real life, as with Queen Rania of Jordan, is to view tiny little birds, dieted down to a silhouette made for TV.”
Menkes adds: “I blame Diana” for a legacy that “has been to lure the next generation of royal princesses towards the mirror. They have focused on appearance, something that Diana so brilliantly manipulated…
“Their goal has become the impossible task of being a new Lady Di.”
