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Politics
Royal glamour in the midst of revolution
By Lindsey Bahr | February 14, 2011
It's a testament to my enduring superficiality that I only became aware of the beautiful Queen Rania through the Best Dressed lists of Vogue and Vanity Fair. Their articles celebrate her style in the same breath as her devotion to high-profile causes such as child abuse and women's rights — conveniently refraining from pointing out any obvious hypocrisies of her lifestyle. For example, last February, VogueUK wrote about what the Queen wore (a bespoke Graeme Black leather jacket that retails for around $1400) while speaking at the World Economic Forum and the designer's delight that his collection was part of "such a historic and important event." And consider the transition between paragraphs from an article that appeared in the March 2009 issue of Vogue:
But [the royals of Spain, Holland, and Belgium] don't get to do what Queen
Rania did earlier this winter: call press conferences and plead, with controlled
passion and visible emotion, for a Middle East cease-fire because, as she
said, "What is happening in Gaza today is not only a violation, in international
law, of universal human rights; not only a humanitarian crisis; it's a crisis
of human dignity." She put the clip from Al Jazeera English straight on her
YouTube channel, and on her official Web site (queenrania.jo). She has the
power to do this. Queen Elizabeth has no such power.
Rania is beautiful, model-skinny, and tall enough that she can step into anything straight off the runway. She is photographed endlessly because she is a knockout in whatever she wears—jeans and a white shirt, or enviable gowns by designer friends such as John Galliano (Dior Haute Couture), Giambattista Valli, Phillip Lim, and Elie Saab. She knows clothes; she shops. "I try to sneak a couple of hours in London or the States. Maybe clothes are a form of creative expression for me. An outlet. Because I don't get to express myself creatively through my official duties," she says. From Gaza to Galliano. Eeesh. As a public figure, fashion can be a dangerous indulgence. Perhaps the "otherness" of royalty makes this situation hard to comprehend. There's an expectation of glamour and luxury when we Americans think of kings and queens. And with Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni as peers, the brazen glorification of their designer goods on the political stage has become somewhat common. The climate in Jordan remains peaceful, though as one of the poorer countries in the region, discontent is rising due to the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Only days before the tribes condemned the Queen, an insightful Washington Post article described the state of political protests in Jordan. A retired general said that "the ruling Hashemite family is the only force able to unite a nation made up of disparate tribes and other groups," and that "the Hashemites are the symbol of the unity of the state." If peace is contingent on public loyalty to the monarchy, part of which must be based on the fact that critics are threatened with imprisonment, it will be interesting to see just what this unprecedented denunciation of the Queen's "lavish lifestyle" might mean for Jordan and its citizens' goals of economic reform.
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