A pretense of shyness.

The shyness of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, aka Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William who is the eldest son of Charles who is the eldest son of the Queen, is baffling. She is a celebrity, famous for doing nothing. Not particularly beautiful, a comely lass would describe her. We do not know her educational qualifications or if she has any work experience. Her curriculum vitae would probably have just one line - Married a Prince. She clearly relishes her status as a celebrity as her frequent changes of clothes would seem to suggest. On a recent trip to the far east she used 18 outfits in 9 days at a cost of 13000 pounds. Unfortunately her trip was marred by publication of her topless pictures in a French magazine, Closer. The pictures were taken with a long distance lens while she was sunbathing on the patio of a French chateau owned by Viscount Linley, son of Margaret, the Queen's sister. The couple were apparently incensed by such a sneaky invasion of their privacy and filed a case in a French court. The court fined the magazine 2500 Euros and ordered Closer to turnover the original photos to the couple. This naturally made the photos famous all over the world and they were printed over 26 pages by the Italian magazine Chi and then on the front page of the Greek newspaper Eleftheros Typos. The Swedish magazine, Se og Hor has already printed them and its sister magazine in Denmark is planning to do the same. It is hard to imagine that the couple did not know that suppressing topless photos of a celebrity is impossible in today's voyeuristic world. Today's cameras do not have films that can be destroyed by destroying the negatives. The pictures would be on a memory card and would have been instantly downloaded onto a computer hard drive so that any number of copies can be made in the future. In 1971, when there were no computers or digital cameras, a paparazzo, Settinio Garritana heard that Jacqueline Kennedy, then married to Aristotle Onassis after the assassination of President Kennedy, used to sunbathe nude on a beach of Skorpios island, a private island owned by Onassis. He dressed as a gardener, rowed out to the island and hid in the undergrowth and took fully naked pictures of Jackie O, as she was known then. Today no one can even imagine how famous she was as First Lady, when her marriage was described as Camelot, and the sympathy for her becoming a widow at such a young age. Every editor refused to publish her naked pictures until they appeared in a 1972 edition of Italy's Playmen and then in a girlie magazine, Hustler in 1975. Prince William is said to be determined that his wife will not be hounded by paparazzos as his mother, Princess Diana was. If so he should ask his wife to do some meaningful job and dress in ordinary clothes unless she is attending an official function. If you are famous for being famous you will be hounded. Especially if your behavior generates gossip.