Diana’s Bond With Women Uncommon

They are construction workers, pizza cooks, therapists and social workers. They are black and white and young and old.

They had nothing in common with the regal Princess of Wales, except that they, too, are mothers, daughters, sisters and wives.

But being a woman was enough.

It was enough, apparently, to make Diana’s tragic death speak deeply to them. More deeply, it seems, than to men.

“My husband’s over it already and I’m still crying when I see pictures of her on television,” said April LaCorte, 29, a communications specialist who lives in Roxborough.

“I was at a party Sunday and the men were talking about who was to blame - the driver, the press, whoever. The women were worrying about her boys and wondering how they felt,” said Karen Eselson Belding, 36, a psychologist at The Renfrew Center.

Some women said they felt a kinship with the princess because she tried to live out the Cinderella tale that all little girls want to believe, only to find out - like every other woman - that real life is no bedtime story.

Others said they admired her willingness to talk about her eating disorders, her loneliness and her unhappy marriage, like a good guest on the Oprah show.

“Women value connectedness more than men,” said Andrea Bloomgarden, 35, a therapist specializing in eating disorders. “It’s part of a woman’s culture to share stories, and Diana would show her vulnerability on her face, and she came across as very human.”

Whatever forged the link between Diana and women all over the world, the bond crossed all sorts of economic, social and generational borders.

Admirers didn’t seem to care that the Princess of Wales lived across the ocean and called a royal palace her home. They didn’t care that the former Lady Diana Spencer probably never clipped coupons or cooked up a package of Hamburger Helper for her boys.

Diana, they said, was one of them.

“I’m black, she was white. I’m a laborer, she was a princess. But that didn’t matter because she cared,” said Robin Nelson, 33, as she stood on a street corner just yards from the Raymond Rosen Replacement Housing project in a grime-stained T-shirt, shorts and heavy work boots. She is a construction laborer.

“She did the things she did because she was a woman and a mother,” Nelson said. “She had everything she wanted. She didn’t need publicity. Being a woman, if I had been in her position, I would have tried to give back to the community, just as she did.”

She was a princess for the ‘90s, combining single-motherhood with humanitarian causes. She delivered comfort to the sick and dying while trying to raise her two boys with real-world values and still find time for a social life.

“It so typifies today’s woman,” said Dianne Beres, director of a program for severely brain-injured adults. “She was married in that royal atmosphere, then to break away from that and resume a very ‘90s kind of role was very courageous.

Berres, 49, who Tuesday was getting her hair done with her daughter Hannah at Julius Scissor Salon in Center City continued: “She gave up a lot of security to strike out on her own. I think there would be a lot of women that would be hard-pressed to do that - give up everything for what you really believe is right in your heart.”

Her theory is that women admire Diana’s courage and compassion, while men see her as “more a sexual being than a woman of substance.”

“In some degree they are probably a little threatened by her,” she said. “I bet Charles was. But what would he expect, that she would be the doting 19-year-old she was all those years ago?”

Women interviewed about the impact of Diana’s death applauded that Diana broke free from the rigid mold that the gray heads of British royalty set for her.

“All Diana ever wanted to do is be a good wife and mother. And they didn’t give her the chance,” said Lillian Lawson, 75, a grandmother and great-grandmother.

“She was a woman who wanted her children to see the world in a real way,” said Patricia Fassett. “She wanted them to see what was beyond the palace doors. It was a woman’s compassion. Had she been a man, I don’t know if she would have felt the same way.”

Fassett is 41 and has AIDS. She works as a peer counselor for Wisdom, a group that does AIDS outreach to women suffering from the disease.

To her, Diana’s genuine compassion for people with AIDS was evident when she became the first member of the royal family to be photographed touching, often embracing, patients infected with the AIDS virus. Her actions, Fassett speculated, were motivated by a nurturing spirit, a spirit that understood that anyone could be stricken by AIDS, including her own children.

Some women, like Ann Lance of Coatesville, loyally followed the ups and downs of Diana’s life since the royal wedding 16 years ago.

Lance, a 39-year-old social worker, was captivated by the plump young woman they called Shy Di. On the day of the royal wedding in 1981, Lance and her husband, Chris, rose at 4 a.m. to make a champagne breakfast and watch the televised nuptials.

After that, she kept up with each new chapter in the princess’ story-book life through magazines, books, even a video that her husband bought her one year as a present. When Prince William was born, “I remember looking at magazines and thinking he was the cutest baby I had ever seen,” she gushed.

Then came the well-publicized betrayals, first by riding instructor James Hewitt, who published a tell-all book about their love affair, and later by her less-than-charming husband, Prince Charles.

“I think it’s just horrible that he did that to her,” Lance said of Hewitt. “I saw him on TV the past couple of days saying he still loved her and felt really bad. What a sleazeball.”

When Diana spoke publicly about her life for the first time in the fall of 1995, Lance was riveted to the television. What she gleaned from the interview was that “I think she really loved Charles and tried to make it work but he was just in love with this other woman,” she said.

“The beauty and charisma that she brought to that royal family … she was like a ray of sunshine,” she said. “She would just glow when she walked in a room.”

Now that Diana is gone, Lance worries about the princess’ sons - Prince William, 15, and Prince Harry, 12 - who by all accounts adored their beautiful, young, fun-loving mother.

“She was their only hope for normalcy,” Lance said.

But women, however, admitted that Diana didn’t capture their full attention until she died.

“I watched CNN all day long on Sunday, and I don’t watch TV,” said Eselson Belding. “I didn’t really know how much I liked her until this happened.”