Ms. Middleton, 33, has been a subject of intense public fixation ever since her star turn as bridesmaid at the royal wedding in 2011, where she trod demurely up the steps of Westminster Abbey
and the eyes of the world fell approvingly upon her glossy chestnut curls and shapely posterior.
But the digital age — defined by a sense of presumed intimacy with famous faces, whose lives play out via smartphones in the palms of our hands —
has intensified the collective appetite to place ordinary women on pedestals in the public arena, only to relish the act of tearing them down.
This perennial question for the global press — and its readership — was raised once again this past weekend, when
Pippa Middleton, younger sister to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, married James Matthews in Berkshire, England.