DATE: Wednesday, September 3, 1997          TAG: 9709020008

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON

                                            LENGTH:   68 lines

DESPITE GLAMOUR, PRINCESS WAS ONE OF US

SHE WAS THE CLOSEST thing to a fairy-tale princess my generation would know.

I remember watching her wedding on television the summer after I graduated from college.

I had spent the summer typing out job resumes, wrestling with fears of living with my parents the rest of my life, and finally getting a newspaper job in a dusty Texas town where I wondered whether I'd last a week.

Meanwhile, Lady Diana Spencer was riding a horse-drawn carriage in England, swooping onto the world stage in a regal wedding gown, and marrying a real-life, honest-to-goodness prince.

Nothing could be finer.

The woman was set for life.

She was young, beautiful, a bit shy. So retiring she only tried out for non-speaking parts in high school plays. And, perhaps most appealing to those of us watching in our living rooms, just a tiny bit ordinary. Not a kindergarten teacher, after all, but an assistant to one. She was just normal enough that we could imagine ourselves in her royal shoes. A face so earnest, a manner so demure, an attitude so unassuming, we could admire her without reservation.

But, of course, her ordinariness would not last for long. Soon she was living the glamorous goldfish-bowl life we reserve for royalty, movie stars and other celebrities we feast upon daily in our newspapers, television screens and magazines.

We followed what she wore, what she ate at galas, whom she danced with. We followed her haircuts. And what she said, and where her children were going to school, and which causes she was championing. We checked out her thighs when paparazzi caught her in bikinis, and watched her frolic with sons in remote vacation spots.

Why? Because she was there, an ordinary person in an extraordinary place. She was our generation, our princess, even an ocean away, and we felt we owned her in a sense. Just like all our heroes and movie stars and celebrities.

And when the cracks in the fairy tale began to show, we watched even more intently. Here then, was the flip side of the dream-come-true: the marital problems. The boredom with Prince Charles. The adultery. The bulimia. The suicidal thoughts.

Ordinary life happenings in extraordinary wrappings: biographies, talk shows, gossip columns. And a divorce that involved bargaining, not over which party would get the silverware, but over the title ``Her Royal Highness.''

If ever there's a time to be glad to be ordinary, it is now, in the aftermath of Diana's death.

Her death makes us glad to be on the reading side of the news, instead of the making side. Glad that our ``gowns'' bring quarters at yard sales instead of millions at Christie's in New York.

And yet, there is a feeling of guilt. Not just for the members of the media, but the ordinary public that made her a sought-after celebrity. We have, in a sense, created her - in mythical proportions - and destroyed her with our fascination. Just like a child who holds a baby bird too tightly.

Maybe, just maybe, her car would have crashed without photographers in pursuit. But it's hard not to acknowledge that our intrigue with this fair maiden may have led to her demise.

So now we have another cultural icon, a touchstone for our times. An Elvis Presley, a Marilyn Monroe, a Grace Kelly, a Jackie O.

There will follow false sightings of her, reminiscences of final chats with the woman who brought life to the most staid of institutions, and gowns sold at Christie's worth millions now.

But strip away the royalty, the celebrity, the glamour, and there is still this, both extraordinary and ordinary. She was a mother.

And no amount of royalty will change the loss for the two sons she leaves behind. For even a boy who would be king is still a boy.

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