![]() Before last week, the closest she’d come to a wardrobe malfunction was a minor midriff showing when she leapt up because Britain won Olympic gold. On the one hand, she’s praised for maintaining her privacy, for being demure and removed. But as usual for the royals, that adulation is complicated. Like her mother-in-law, Kate is adored by public and press. In their statement, they called the illicit photos “reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana”-excesses that included the People’s Princess’s death in a car crash while fleeing photographers. ![]() Kate and William say their outrage about last week’s invasion stems from fear the media will push its way into Kate’s life as relentlessly as it did Diana’s. The public response to the fracas bore that out: This week, public opinion overwhelming supported British papers’ decision not to publish the topless photos, but Beckett said most of the country has looked them up online. The Brits are torn, too, he said, between wanting the royal family to stay inviolate and uplifting and wanting, well … to see Kate Middleton’s breasts. (Case in point: British papers love to hate Prince Charles for his aristocratic pastimes). They rely on press coverage to fulfill their purpose as a model of national values, but they also depend on a cultivated mystique-which the media can undercut by airing their dirty laundry or making them look too effete. The monarchs are trapped in a “Faustian pact” with the media, Charlie Beckett, the director of the London School of Economics’ media think tank, told me. The truth is, Britain’s first family has long hovered between sacred symbol and tabloid fodder. Are its members paragons of flawless breeding and unimpeachable decorum, or are they just celebrities who enrich the public’s lives with their designer outfits, attractive faces, and salacious affairs? But while the tawdry affair has provoked the ire of Will and Kate-the couple released an uncharacteristically caustic statement trumpeting their “anger and disbelief” and calling the invasion of their privacy “grotesque”-it also highlights the ambivalent role the royal family plays in the British cultural consciousness. ![]() Although the press has spent the past two years buzzing about Kate Middleton’s impeccable wardrobe, not even the most inspired sartorial choice has garnered the attention that topless photos of the princess did last week.
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