What Kate Middleton owes us

Kate Middleton owes us nothing. Leave her alone.

Kate Middleton owes us an explanation. What on earth is going on?

For what it’s worth, I’m in neither of these camps even though some would have us all choose a team

: Team Privacy of Team Truther

I keep starting to write a Babble about Kate Middleton and I keep deleting it because really, what the world needs now is not another hot take from someone who has no idea what’s actually going on with this poor woman.

The image which was ‘killed’ by photo agencies this week

One thing I can comment on, however, as the co-founder of a media company, is that I’m not of the belief that we owe Kate (Catherine? C? The Princess?) silence. I know some people disagree vehemently with this. The shadow of Kate’s mother-in-law, Diana, ‘hounded to death’ by the media looms large over this narrative and I’ve noticed it re-awakening a lot of anger among those who remember 1997 and the fury her death unleashed.

Whatever is going on with Kate, it’s clear that it’s serious and that beyond the physical, she is struggling with the constraints of being a Princess. And how could she not. It’s an inhuman system, this royal business. Like being bred in captivity. This isn’t new though, the media attention has not changed for Kate. She has always been under intense scrutiny from the moment she began dating Prince William.

That’s the job - not a part of the job but her actual job: to provide an heir and a spare and to be photographed while appearing at public functions without displaying any wants, needs, frailties, vulnerabilities or unpalatable human emotion. Don’t complain, don’t explain. Be seen so you can be believed just like all the other royals.

So what is our job? I can only speak for Mamamia when I say that we do not support the paparazzi system that drives photographers to stalk or harass famous people.

But do we publish content about the royals? We do. It’s our job to serve our audience and provide for them a wide variety of content on topics they’re interested in. And let me assure you, even if you don’t believe Kate Middleton’s whereabouts should be a story, it is. A vast number of people are very, very interested in her and the royal family right now. Every media organisation knows this because the data doesn’t lie, nor does it virtue signal or feel protective. It simply reflects the topics people want to know more about and right now one of those topics is Kate Middleton. Big time.

Similarly, the job of the royal family is to be interesting and relevant to their audience and for centuries they have done their utmost- very successfully - to control the way in which they do that. They are usually fairly good at controlling the narrative to suit their agenda, as Harry told us bitterly after repeatedly experiencing what he saw as being thrown under the bus by the Palace machine.

But their attempts aren’t always successful. Sometimes the narrative breaks free from all attempts to control it - marriage breakdowns, illness, love and death have frequently derailed the Palace’s fairytale spin. And not infrequently, the spin makes things so much worse. In the Internet age, we are seeing in real time how out-dated and naive their PR strategy really is.

Anyway, none of what I’ve just said is remotely original so I wanted to share with you some commentary that is original and that I’ve found myself thinking about since reading it.

From Amelia Lester, writing in Forgein Policy about how the game has changed in terms of our expectations of public figures and the portrayal of their ‘real’ lives:

…..let’s not underestimate the impact of the runaway royals, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who have pulled back the curtain on the most famous family of all. Between the couple’s tell-all interview with Oprah, their Netflix documentary, and Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, the British royal family’s rampant dysfunction has been revealed anew for those not alive or sentient when Princess Diana was doing the same. When Diana told the BBC in 1995 that she wanted to be a princess of hearts, but didn’t see herself as becoming Queen of England, she seemed to be grasping ahead of her time the growing potency of attention over institutional power. There’s a reason why the Kardashians, who also understood this truth before others, are referred to as “America’s royal family”—and at this stage, probably live much nicer, and easier, lives than their British counterparts.

These days we are all the popular Marie Kondo gif: “I love mess!” We expect it, we demand it, and when it’s not there, we get angry.

And from Jacqueline Maley writing in the Sydney Morning Herald about the subtext of the speculation about Kate’s health:

….From her convalescence she tweeted out her apology.

What was she really apologising for?

For forgetting to turn down the lights after she exited stage left?

We all saw the rigging and were reminded that this was a performance; that none of this is real.

If the royals are going to pretend life is perfect; that their ongoing existence is not sticky-taped together by denial (of colonialism, of anachronism, of reality), then they at least need to be convincing about it.

The public engages in magical thinking when it comes to the royal family, but doctoring a photo shows a level of deliberate manipulation that is somehow still shocking to us.

Kate is one of the most famous people in the world, but we know nothing of her personality. It is deliberately left blank, like a non-applicable field on a form.

People talk about Kate’s “glamour” or her “elegance”.

Women’s magazines call her a “fashion icon” – a redundant compliment, like calling an Olympian “fit”. If your job is to be well-groomed, and you have a team of stylists and a limitless budget to accomplish it, do you really merit praise for being fashionable?

Kate knows better than anyone that she wouldn’t be able to perform her role as effectively if she had a different body; if she was fatter, or less well-groomed, had a menopausal middle-section, or an extra chin, or visible signs of disease or disability.

Her function for the monarchy is to be photographed. She needs to photograph well, to use the euphemism.

The only thing Kate should be sorry for is apologising.

And, perhaps, sorry that the world into which she married no longer exists - it’s harder to hide monarchical manipulation now, even as it gets more tempting to manipulate

And Holly Wainwright writing for Mamamia about the reason for the intense speculation and meme-ification of one woman’s whereabouts:

It's all I've been doing this week, I admit. I wrote about Kate. I spoke about Kate on four different podcasts. I have had an inestimable number of IRL conversations about Kate. I'm doing it again, now. 

But this has absolutely nothing to do with Kate. She is but one woman, a world away, locked inside a very lovely house, probably with a sore tummy. A woman having her privacy invaded at a gross scale, and not being looked after by a family who has deep form in this regard. Just ask Prince Harry.

It's not her, it's us. We're dying to be distracted. The world is dark and winter is coming. We don't know what to do or if we can help or how to solve. Not women and children being starved in a war zone. Not the rise of the Far Right in Europe. Not the potential return of a sex-offender to the highest office in the most influential country in the world. Not the murdered women here at home, the relentless news of another taken from us by a stranger, by a husband, by an ex. 

We're worried about money. Our hormones are whack. We haven't seen Oppenheimer. We're addicted to the scroll. Our kids are addicted to the scroll. It's definitely all our fault. 

And so. Here's a manageable mystery. One woman's misery, sure, but part of a much greater plot in a show we've been watching our whole lives. Let's waste time we profess not to have obsessing about a woman who appears to have everything. Just like the story itself: Palace intrigue, a picture-perfect princess, a family tearing each other apart.

Have we got a spare half-hour to work out what's really happening to Kate? No.

But we've never been more up for it.