ABSTRACT
The American public has a notoriously short attention span. Nothing is older than yesterday's news. And yet, in 1997 alone, American network and syndicated television ran 696 stories on Princess Diana, the great majority of which appeared in the four months after her death. This chapter aims to examine the media because one of the things that brought this death home to Americans was that it was a media event, and people around the world engaged in 'virtual mourning'. Several writers, almost all of them women, attempted to understand this by examining mystical and mythical aspects of Diana's life and death. Gender role socialization would predict that women would be more comfortable than men showing certain emotions, especially public displays of grief and vulnerability. Like the lives of women around the world, American women's lives have changed dramatically, especially in latter half. Diana was young and uneducated when catapulted into fame, a pre-feminist Cinderella waiting the arrival of her prince.
