Fashion

Prince Harry's public statement powerfully highlights how the bullying Meghan has faced comes with a real human cost



“I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person,” said Prince Harry, in his public statement, issued this week addressing the media treatment of his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. He calls out the “relentless propaganda” about her and simply, movingly states: “I have been a silent witness to her private suffering for too long.”

Let’s face it, he has a point, doesn’t he? We’ve addressed this here before – Meghan can’t even sneeze right before she’s pounced on. Everything from her charitable ventures to her choice of denier tights has been used as ammunition against her. But Harry has also hit upon a very important facet of this media attack – it has a real human cost.

When is it, I wonder, that we stopped viewing celebrities as real people? What is it about their lives that makes us believe they are so divorced from reality so as not to feel real, human emotion: shame, fear, depression? We are always so surprised when celebrities open up about mental health struggles, as if depression cares if you are a royal, have a Grammy or live in poverty and anonymity. But – NEWS FLASH – famous people are real people too. How real you are, how deserving of compassion and safety, should not be measured by the degree to which you are in the public eye. The attacks they suffer are mental health triggers and should, rightly so, be treated as such.

Harry’s statement makes a clear link between the tabloid media’s treatment of Meghan and bullying. Harry’s message was as relevant to anyone who has suffered online bullying on social media as it is to arguably one of the most famous women in the world; his wife. Now, more than ever, we are subject to a sliver of what it is like to be a famous person: to have your looks, views, choices and life held up to public scrutiny and to be the recipient of abuse from, largely, anonymous trolls. As Harry says, bullying is a far more dangerous action that we give it credit for “it destroys people and destroys lives…bullying, which scares and silences people.”

Bullying is something we at GLAMOUR feel extremely strongly about. How, when we cannot condone bullying of this nature, do we feel about the crazy amounts of celebrity gossip so many of us gorge ourselves on every day?

Let’s be honest we all find ourselves scrolling down that infamous sidebar of shame (you know the one) – rejoicing in the dramas of celebrities against our better judgement. Yes, we know it’s wrong, but oooo isn’t it juicy? It’s just like being a spectator to a friend’s drama, or an argument. It’s entertaining, even if its sordid, it’s something happening to someone who isn’t us. It’s the worst part of our human nature; that morbid car crash instinct to look at someone else’s pain and feel better because it’s not happening to you.

But we forget, of course, that these public dramas are private pains and that our interest in them only fuels the fire.

Harry is right here, to make the obvious connection to his mother, Diana, the Princess of Wales. She was a woman whose most painful moments were plastered across the world: the breakdown of her marriage, her husband’s infidelity, her subsequent love life. The media’s desperation to get even a glimpse of her, is what literally led to her death. She was a woman, essentially, killed by our insatiable curiosity in her.

So, how culpable are we? Is our obsession with reality TV, our compulsion to scroll and click and lend our eyeballs to people’s personal lives laid bare for our entertainment, making things worse? Should we seriously re-consider our relationship to celebrity?

I think yes. It’s easy to distance ourselves from what Harry is talking about. After all, we didn’t publish Meghan’s private letter (something she is taking legal action on) nor have we publicly criticised her actions, or questioned her choices in a cruel or unusual way. But we have watched, haven’t we? Many of us have treated her personal family drama as our own personal sitcom, and for that, I think we need to take a long, hard look at ourselves.

The media’s crusade against Meghan and celebrities like her can only survive if it feeds on our interest. So, is it finally time we lost interest?





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