Interest in Tittygate seems to have subsided around these parts, but something like this is bound to happen again, probably with Kate again, in fact, unless she and her princeling make up their minds about what century they’d like to live in. William and Kate must decide whether they see privacy in 20th- or 21st-century terms. As it is, they’re trying to have it both ways.
Freedoms come not only with responsibilities, but with consequences, as anyone who has ever crashed their bike without a helmet will tell you. When the Queen was young, being topless even on one’s own balcony would have been considered obscene, socially and personally if not legally. As a result, though the Queen has suffered through life with breasts an uninterruptedly alabaster shade of white, she has also never had to look at published pictures of those breasts.
For much of the 20th century and the century before, certain body parts were meant to be seen in only the most restricted of circumstances (in a way that would not be that foreign to many modern-day Orthodox Jews and Muslims). The female breast, for instance, could be seen by female relatives or servants, by a husband in appropriately intimate circumstances, and by doctors if absolutely necessary. Things started to change in certain social circles in the 1950s, and those circles widened only marginally in the decades that followed.
By the middle of the first decade of this century, and in the wake of a few well known sex tapes and the global eructation of pornography, privacy of this sort began to fall apart thanks to phones with cameras and social media through which to spread them. Though breast-feeding still seems to hit an anachronistic chord, tits, penises and even the occasional anus have made their way into the mainstream of most people William and Kate’s age.
Granted, William and Kate are not like most people their age. They are conservative by nature, and so it should not be surprising that they are as appalled as they seem to be over the recent breastacular spectacular.
Except that she was, with what seems to be very little timidity, sunning those breasts out of doors.
Now I don’t think she was asking for it. I don’t think she deserved it or had it coming. Those are all quite mean reactions the whole affair.
My problem with the situation is that topless sunbathing comes from a different place entirely from the sort of lawsuits the couple is now waging, and her (or her new family’s) reaction to getting caught out seems disproportionate.
I don’t mean to say that exposing one’s self out of doors on private grounds, alone with one’s royal love bug, is the same as having one’s self exposed in Italian and Irish magazines and newspapers. But I am saying that the extent of the reaction is a little out of synch for someone who decides she’d like naturally bronzed boobs. If she decides to take those puppies for a walk, she should expect someone will notice.
Anything we do out of doors, whether it’s scratching ourselves, plucking nose hairs or airing a body part we usually keep under wraps, can and often will be glimpsed by strangers. The royal family probably don’t move in the CCTV world as much as the rest of us, nor do they have as much intercourse with the social media as about a billion of we others do. But surely that’s more than made up for by the fact that they are, more than many of us, accustomed to having big lenses poking at them whenever they’re out of doors. Once again, I’m not saying she was asking for it, just that the Duchess of Cambridge should be as aware of the limits of privacy as any of us.
The duchess is richer than most of us, of course, and therefore perhaps more used to having larger private spaces around her, accustomed as many rich people are to doing as they like behind locked gates. But at Mitt Romney is learning this week, even $50,000-a-plate dinners are not the secret gardens they once were.
Gates and the private compounds they enclosed are not holding hoi polloi back they way they once did. I think that’s a good thing. These days, if you want to keep people at bay, you need to cultivate a facade that convinces people not to be interested in your private life. Kate has a new grandmother-in-law who may be willing to give her a few pointers on that. And if the duchess doesn’t want to play along with this particular aspect of the 21st century and insists on having both absolute privacy and colourful bosoms, she can always buy a tanning bed.
As Tittygate subsides, Wentegate looks like it’s on the rise and, with any luck, will be around for some time. I’ll get back to you on that shortly.
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Bert Archer writes for Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter: @bertarcher.
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