Yahoo Lifestyle The Allure Of Kate Middleton
Type Kate Middleton into Google and, in 0.25 seconds, you¹ll be rewarded with 282 million hits. She’s everywhere: the adored go-to girl for weekly women’s magazines and hungry British tabloids; glamorous muse for a gazillion bloggers. Her image is so familiar, we feel we’ve actually met her, this pretty woman with a clear-eyed gaze and girl-next-door warmth, bones as fine as royal china and a cascade of glossy brunette hair that could star in its own commercial. We know her shoe size (39), her choice in wedding fragrance (White Gardenia Petals) and her pet allergy (horses, sadly)...But do we know the real Kate?
The fascination with the future Duchess of Cambridge began the instant the world discovered that their favourite handsome prince was dating a commoner. After Diana, royal-watchers longed for a new princess to repair the broken fairytale and it was Kate Middleton, her very name straight out of a romance novel, who stepped up to try on the glass slipper.
Brave, really, because it meant she’d have to endure the see-sawing, love/hate thing we impose on celebrities. They become a projection. So, early on, Kate came in for the standard helping of gushing admiration served with a steaming side-order of sniping. Ms Middleton, some observers gleefully declared, was a “gold-digging hanger-on”. She was “waity Katie”, patiently conniving to snare her prince. She and her sister Pippa were the “wisteria sisters” – “highly decorative, terribly fragrant and with a ferocious ability to climb". Her mother was a mere flight attendant! Others decided Kate was lovely and poised, had great hair, enviable legs, and doted on the motherless William. Our role model. Our rival.
Still, would any of us really want the job of being a royal wife of Windsor? It unhinged Diana, and Fergie’s, ahem, mishaps, showed that being a princess isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be in Disneyland. Marriage to a member of the microscoped British royal family can turn into a major career challenge, even if does come with a handsome wardrobe allowance, your bodyweight in diamonds and a castle bristling with buff men in uniform.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to seek out some equally rich but un-royal husband, the kind of guy who doesn’t need you to open hospitals or have your hem-lengths decreed by his grandmother?
Probably. Yet, unlike Diana, Kate Middleton had plenty of time to consider the many minuses of becoming the Duchess of Cambridge...and she still said yes. All of which seems to confirm that it was love, actually. We liked that.
Kate, new to the family firm, is still finding her way and we’re still getting to know her. She reveals little, although we loved her for not hiding her post-baby tummy. She rarely speaks in public and avoids interviews. Then again, so do most of the royals – they’re not the Kardashians. She is stylish but not posh: Alexander McQueen and Topshop. She’s regal, but also a bit WAG. She’s been variously described as “magnificent”, “dull”, “amazing”, “normal” and “very normal” (the Queen must have breathed a sigh of relief – welcome back, normal and dull!).
Perhaps HM has counseled the new member of the family to avoid Diana’s pitfalls and keep a lower profile. Perhaps the duchess is shy. Perhaps she just wants to let William shine in public. On the other hand, a little mystery is powerful. It has only fuelled the fascination.
We might get a sharper sense of the real Kate after the royal visit here, with baby George, an echo of Charles and Diana’s 1983 tour. Apparently she’s planning to wear clothes designed by Catherine Walker, one of Diana’s favourite labels. She is not, however, Diana. And she’s not a fantasy princess. She is the former Kate Middleton, an ordinary woman who chose to be royal and now must bear the weight of the world watching. Let’s hope it doesn’t crush her.
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