Priscilla putting makeup on, on the way to deliver her baby…

I don’t think the big accusation of this film is against the individual Elvis Presley in particular - people arguing over whether he abused women and girls in real life miss the larger point of the picture (but come on, he did that shit). Priscilla is groomed notably not into sex, but rather into trophyhood, dollhood, pethood. To have a future life stripped away as she must have felt hers… absolutely devestating. She applies her makeup before leaving for the hospital unprompted; she’s been trained. She can only be seen in public just so. Of course, she is under immense expectation as the wife of Elvis Presley, but just as she is, everyday women are groomed by a culture predicated on sexuality to portray themselves always as attractive, always as chaste, always as ready. Such is Coppola’s point, as it were. A woman does not have the same societal freedom to make a deli run in PJs that a man does. Priscilla’s plight mirrors that of the everywoman, though she is able to disrobe in a mansion; her gilded cage is her own image.