The Strange Case of Jade Goody

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Until recently, few outside of Britain and the realm of its tabloids knew the name Jade Goody. The 27-year old mother of two started as a homegrown reality show contestant and ended up with her own brand and mini-empire -- and, in the past few months, a controversy surrounding her decision to document her fatally flagging health for public consumption.

Attendant paparazzi have long been there to capture Goody's varied antics, which ranged from T.V. guest spots and exercise videos to an infamous, racist comments debacle to the launch of her own perfume line. For years, Jade Goody's soap-operatic life was covered in entertainment blogs and in the gossip magazines that thrive on Britain's colorful F-List of television stars and footballers' wives.

After her on-again, off-again boyfriend, the impeccably named Jack Tweed, went to prison for assaulting a teenager with a golf club, Goody's real life was already over the edge of the bizarre. But late last year, while she was participating in the Indian version of Big Brother, Bigg Boss -- a sort of mea culpa for the uproar she caused over comments to Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty on the British show in 2007 -- Jade learned that she had cervical cancer. Returning to London, she kicked off a new sort of media frenzy, a national obsession with her health and well-being.

Last week, Jade and the watching world were told that the situation was terminal: that her cancer had metastasized and she had, possibly, mere weeks to live. Some would retreat at such news, would shut out the circus of cameras: not Jade Goody. The woman whose persona was made large and loud in the press will sell her dying with equal aplomb. Rather than give in to the weak prognosis, Jade Goody got married last weekend.

In a way, it's the perfect conclusion to Jade's photographed life, and it will bring the public closure in a way far more satisfactory than a private death. As much as we're afraid of confronting the imminent truth of her condition, we love nothing so much as a fairy tale. As the young mother prepared her dream wedding from her deathbed, we can't really judge Goody for doing it or for the glossy magazines for snatching up the story for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Jack Tweed, that handsome young fellow, on his knees beside his stricken love, proposing to the flash of cameras; Goody calling her five chosen bridesmaids to her hospital bedside; the $5,000 Harrods wedding dress receiving its own press conference as it left the store. This is a modern-day fairy tale writ garishly, with the hardscrabble girl from the other side of the tracks brought to fame and fortune through sly perseverance, about to lose it all to a cruel twist of fate. That her final chapter should be one of Britain's most talked-about weddings since Princess Diana's is, of course, a fitting end. The only thing we like better than a fairy tale is a wedding to mark the close of it

That Jade Goody should finish her life in such a royal fashion is a new by-product of our reality-obsessed culture. She was first spotlighted on Big Brother for her ignorance of world affairs, for displaying a level of cultural nearsightedness intensely and humorously British in its manifestation. She rode highs like publishing her own autobiographies, producing perfume and opening her own salons, a ubiquitous figure in tabloid pages with photographers waiting for her to exit nightclubs.

These were balanced with low moments that only fed her out-of-country fame in their audacity: the racially tinged comments directed at actress Shilpa Shetty on reality television, the attempts at coming back into the public's good graces and the ongoing drama with 'toy boy' Tweed.

All of this is somehow being resolved by the greater drama of her wedding and her dying: Tweed will play Prince Charming; there will be more cameras than ever before, and Shetty wrote on her blog that she wished she was not on location and could be there in attendance. For a moment, all is well in the strange balance between staged reality and real life in Britain.