The royal boobs have apparently been seen. It might seem comical, or silly, or daft, a discussion that prompts sniggering and adolescent chortles. But with every fresh photo set there’s a testing of boundaries going on and a new stripping away of privacy – not just of celebrities, but of all of us.
I haven’t seen the photos. Why would I want to? Many media commentators have begun their discussion with a sadfaced confession: Yes, I have seen the royal breasts, I forced myself through professional necessity to look at them, like a surgeon inspecting a bundle of diseased organs.
Well no, not me. I have no interest in seeing sneaked photos of someone in private – the photographs of Kate were apparently taken while she and William were on holiday at Viscount Linley’s chateau in France. Now, I don’t go round on Weston Beach, say, gawping at other people’s bodies, so why should I do so at home? If someone wants to walk around in their pants, so what? It’s no business of mine. Let them live their lives.
Imagine walking around with a normal pocket camera, asking to take photos of someone on the beach. You wouldn’t. Because you’d feel like a pervert. Because you would be. Add on a long lens and a hide, though, and suddenly this behaviour somehow becomes acceptable – acceptable enough for a magazine to pay for your dirty photos.
It’s a slightly different situation from the Prince Harry pictures. He, the dozy fool, was mucking about in a Las Vegas suite the size of Blackpool, and got snapped by an onlooker. He, the buffoon (sorry, I mean the Brave Boy Battling the Taliban, having entirely coincidentally gone on a PR-boosting tour of duty since) may have been in a private space, but wasn’t exactly acting in a way that didn’t attract attention.
Kate, on the other hand, is not being drunk, not partying, not mucking about, but just standing there, I’m led to believe. What justification can there be for that? We all know human beings have holidays. This Kate incident has all the nasty hallmarks of the worst excesses of the paparazzi: the sneaking in bushes, the enormous long lenses, the grainy photos, the popular trashy press lapping it up.
Lapped up in France, at least. Closer magazine proudly declared that William and Kate were alone on a romantic holiday: “Well, almost. Closer was there!” Can you imagine a British magazine using such a jolly tone, post Diana?
In Britain, the dead-tree press have voluntarily agreed not to print photos of Kate other than at public engagements – not as a sop to the chilling effects of nasty Brian Leveson, by the way, but to keep things sweet with Buckingham Palace. So this is another example of national borders and old media being pretty meaningless when it comes to breaking stories.
For once, our press will be doing the right thing, though not just because it’s the right thing to do. There’s no public interest. There is no value other than curiosity and prurience. There is no reason for anyone to see those photos, which are a huge violation of privacy.
But how many of us are going to have a sneaky look at the photos? That’s the telling factor. Searches for “Kate Middleton t*pless photos” are probably soaring into the stratosphere as I write this. People want to see. How soon before the lines get blurred again between “things people want to see” and “things which are genuinely in the public interest”? We may all claim the moral high ground, but how many of us can resist the temptation?
Royal flesh makes money. From Prince Charles’s cock to Harry’s bum and Kate’s boobs, it seems we think we’re entitled to a piece of them. I’ve written before about the expectations placed upon Kate, as the uterus on legs, with the maiden-aunt nation demanding she become pregnant immediately.
I don’t think we are, because they’re just people. Massively wealthy, privileged people, but people. So what if they have bodies, like every other person in the world? They don’t belong to us.
One day it’s Kate, the next it might be you with a lens hidden half a mile away taking pictures of what you’re up to. If you buy into the celebrity photos, you’re throwing away your own privacy.
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