Before we begin, a quick fancy-British-people refresher: Hilary Mantel is the two-time Booker Prize–winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies; Kate Middleton is a princess. Okay! During a media lecture at the British Museum, Mantel, who admittedly is something of an authority on royal women (at least in the Tudor era), went in on Duchess Catherine, calling her “plastic,†“machine-made,†“painfully thin … without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character.†(The descriptions have drowned out her larger point about oppressive media coverage, which possibly proves her argument.) In response, Kate wore a wrap dress with no coat and allowed millions of people to ogle her teeny-tiny baby bump.
Update: Prime Minister David Cameron has (no surprise) sided with Kate Middleton, calling Mantel’s speech “completely misguided and completely wrong.†This is like when Obama called Kanye a “jackass†over the Taylor Swift thing, except maybe even more trivial? (And maybe more wrong. Discuss.)