Why does Isabel Preysler generate such a large audience?

On Thursday night, the media effigy Isabel Preysler visited The anthill to promote his memoir. In Catalonia, it was the fifth most-watched program after the two Newscast, heIt's happening and the PolandThe political satire program had three thousand viewers so the ants wouldn't do it for it. overtaking: 266,000 viewers and a 15.7% audience share. In Spain, it was the most-watched program of the day with 2,416,000 viewers.

It is inevitable to wonder about the possible causes of this curiosity about a woman who has participated in the public space in an ornamental way, as a decorative figure, displayed in magazines as a treasure for collective contemplation.

Advertising has used her as a symbol linked to luxury and elegance. She has also been used as an aspirational model of womanhood. A fantasy of perfection, despite the aura of artificiality that has surrounded her life and her beauty. Isabel Preysler has exploited the character and, like cats, she has survived different lives depending on her husband.

The art critic and essayist John Berger wrote in Ways of looking (1972): "Men look at women. And women look at themselves while being looked at." Berger wanted to explain how, through art but also through television, women had learned to look at themselves as if they were a man looking at a woman. That is, by internalizing that external, masculine gaze. Preysler seems the greatest exponent of this approach: she has controlled how she is seen and dominated others' perception of her. She has used her beauty, sculpted with the help of a scalpel, as a form of power. She has made her appearance, and the mystery surrounding it, an asset beyond money. She has constructed her own myth. A myth of pre-constitutional Spain that has perpetuated itself over the decades. She herself naturally explained how she would have a snack at El Pardo with her friend Carmen, and how she would watch her grandfather, Francisco Franco, drinking Fanta while they spent the afternoon gazing at the No-Do.

Only a gap of unhappiness appeared. She confessed to having been a victim of her husband's jealousy, and emphasized the difficulties and complications this has caused in her daily life and the lack of personal freedom it has brought her. She spoke of her cosmetic surgeries with resignation, oblivious to the enslavement they have caused her. Pablo Motos, understanding the seriousness of jealousy, noted: "There are people from certain cultures where the sky ends in abuse because they believe that the other person is their property, as if it were a sofa.". She said it as if this were a problem of other countries or traditions.

Isabel Preysler's audience may respond to the simple morbid curiosity of watching an icon in motion vintageBut what we saw prompted an anthropological look at machismo and classism.