What Would Kate Do During a Privacy Breach?

With all of the craziness going on over the topless photos of Kate taken while on holiday in France with Prince William (What? You’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard?! Get up to date here), we haven’t really gotten around to posting a longer version of our thoughts than those that fit in 140 characters. (Read our Tweets here) so why not now?

We’ve read/watched many media sources discussing this story and surprisingly to us there are two common misconceptions that many of them kept repeating that we don’t agree with in regards to Duchess Kate.

1. She’s a public figure (and decided to become one for that matter) so her life should be on display and she should expect no privacy.  We thoroughly and strongly disagree with this statement. Yes, Kate is a public figure and there is pretty exceptional rabid interest in her; but we also think that there are limits to being a public persona which accord her the right to have a private life as well. To put it bluntly- Kate deserves a day off too.
2. There’s nothing wrong with the photos, they’re just a girl topless sunbathing  with her husband which happens all the time in France. Yes, we agree with the fact that there is nothing wrong with the photos- but what’s at issue here is that in a time she thought she was enjoying a private retreat with her husband she was being ogled by a French paparazzi. If you think we’re over exaggerating on what she thought was privacy, check out the picture of where the photographer was and where Kate and William were.

   

The Palace took the unprecedented step of pursuing legal action against the French Magazine Closer (which we understand to be the approximate equivalent to US Weekly in the US) which published the pictures so we’ll have to see what happens. It looks like the magazine has taken the cover illustration of its website and after public pressure refused to further publish them so hopefully the leak of photo has been stopped, although as we all know… Once it’s on the internet it’s not really ever going away. The paparazzi era, folks.

So there’s the bad news. Now onto what we see as a bright spot: since this news broke, we’ve seen Kate since looking and acting with what we can only describe as extreme class and grace.

The majority of us will not be chased by paparazzi with long-long-long zoom lenses trying to catch a picture of our boobs anytime soon, but we will all in our lives be faced with embarrassing moments or forced to deal with things becoming public that we would have rather didn’t. And in those moments we can absolutely learn from Kate in how she’s acted over the last few days. Here are some takeaways:

• Don’t talk about it – Talking and drawing attention to something we weren’t wanting to be out in the open is pretty much admitting it bothered you and letting the people who published/shared/discussed the incident know that they got to you. Don’t give them the satisfaction! It’s obvious that Kate was made aware of the situation but still went about her duties that day and didn’t let it sour her day. She could have refused to participate in the day’s events or refused to meet with the public (OK, we’re only guessing she could have) but she didn’t. Kate seems to have realized that she is a Princess now (in all but title) and she must look beyond herself sometimes to the greater good of the monarchy and country. Use these situations as an opportunity to show off how elegant, classy and graceful you are
• Make a joke of it when you have to – Sometimes there is no hiding when something like a topless photo scandal hits because you’re out on a Royal Tour of Duty. OK, so that doesn’t happen to the rest of us, but it did happen to Kate and what did she and William do to let the world know that they were taking it in stride? They made a joke about it. When in Borneo and visiting a rainforest, William joked about there being a “spy” in a tree- really positioned by the Royal couple themselves to get one shot to share around- but did it with such intonation and meaning that it was clear what he was talking about.