Mail: Middle Aged Woman Does Something Wrong by shoutingatco.ws

One of the weirdest things about becoming famous must be that suddenly EVERY part of your life is available to the public. Journalists and photographers suddenly have carte blanche to dissect everything you do, wear or say.

For some, it’s an occupational hazard: release an album and pose in your pants for FHM, and inevitably there will be media interest. For others though, the limelight is thrust upon them without their consent, knowledge or desire. Like Carole Middleton.

Amanda Platell has decided, for absolutely no reason, to go on the attack. She opens with:

Holy mother-of-the bride! What does Carole Middleton think she looks like? The 56-year-old mother of three may have the enviably slim figure of a woman half her age, but surely her days of getting away with thigh-skimming flirty skirts, bare legs and trendy biker boots are long gone.

Already, she’s talking about how Carole has a nice body, but should cover it up.

She looks, y’know… normal. Like a normal person wearing a normal skirt on a normal day. Or, as Platell would have it:

Walking down the street in matching outfits, Carole and Pippa looked as if they were filming an episode of the BBC series Hotter Than My Daughter — a reality show where daughters despair of their mutton-dressed-as-lamb mothers and their too sexy, too revealing, too young choice of clothes.

Really? Aren’t we just being judgemental for the sake of having an opinion on Carole? It’s genuinely upsetting that of all the things that a newspaper columnist could discuss – such trivial things as the inquest of a man pushed over by a policeman; middle-eastern uprising; Japan’s rebuilding efforts – she’s chosen a stranger’s skirt.

Of course, there’s a place for discussing trivia and bullshit, but this is an article bullying a middle-aged woman over the way she dresses.

Such behaviour from Carole Middleton will only give ammunition to those cynics who think she is a shameless social climber. William’s more snooty friends who called out ‘Doors to manual’ every time Kate entered the room — in reference to her mother’s former career as a trolley dolly — will be having a field day.

Such awful, snooty people – but I’ll repeat their jokes (or possibly even just make them up), so that as many people as possible see it.

It’s known as the 15/50 phenomenon — because the woman may look like a teenager from behind, but she is decidedly middle-aged from the front.

Again, more witless, cruel jokes aimed at a woman who has done, as far as we can tell, absolutely sod-all wrong.

The more we read of this column, the more depressing it is. We could continue to pull it apart, grabbing quotes and showing what a heartless shitheel Ms. Platell is. We could even run an image search, find her wearing less-than-perfect dresses (or even perfect dresses and just make up reasons to criticise her.)

Let’s take a step back, because this is about more than just Platell writing some bilge about a woman she doesn’t know. The implication throughout the piece is that Middleton is trying to raise herself up, to be part of the Royal crowd, even though as – shock – a trolley dolly, she’s not in their social league.

Like a pain, on your wedding day

Of course she’s fucking not: they’re the Royal family, they’re built on hundreds of years of making up reasons to be better than you. She’s trying to fit in, and Platell doesn’t like it, and assumes that the Mail readership won’t, too.

How dare this woman who is lower-class than Platell (a trolley dolly, remember) try to move above her? In finding something to cricitise, she’s trying to push her back into her place. Fuck off, pleb.

We can’t help but suspect that Platell is looking for something to criticise: If she’d been wandering around in a sack, then she’d be told off for looking frumpy and letting her daughter down. Or told off for wearing too much make-up, or shopping in the wrong shops, or eating a Greggs pasty out of the paper.

Platell sounds bitter, mental and angry at the world. An unnecessarily hateful attack on someone whose only crime is to have a daughter that bonks the future king. That’s right, bonks.

And she was paid actual, real money for the attack. Well done, Amanda.

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