The scenario of Kate in her home office,tinkering to create the perfect comeback photo after abdominal surgery in January,is genuinely bizarre and weird.
People edit images for all kinds of reasons,and have been doing so since before generative AI,or even Photoshop.Instagram
Imagine the thought bubble:“I’ve just heard of a cool new thing called AI. Going to give it a crack. Charlotte’s arm is bothering me. I’ll chop half of it off but leave in Louis’ strange crossed fingers. And I’ll make my entire tummy a big black blob so nobody looks too hard at it. Done! Press send.”
So bizarre,so weird is it,that Kate’s mea culpa for tampering with the UK Mother’s Day image was seen by almost 30 million social media users in its first hours.
Roll up,roll up! Since when does a senior royal cop to an own goal,instead of sticking to the “never complain,never explain” dictum?
Look,I quite love Kate for going there,especially for something as innocuous as editing a snap for social media. We’ve all chucked on filters,aiming for arty or to please our 137 followers. I was tempted to tamper with my lats and traps in a bikini photo just yesterday. Except,of course,the princess’ image was posted for a specific purpose and its tampering was not innocuous.
Yes,the now-infamous photo looked like a stock standard “cuddle with mummy” snap for UK Mother’s Day,but that was its cover story. In reality,it was a strategic proof-of-life photo to stop Kate being hunted,quench curiosity and reassure the public the future queen is not in a coma or dead or reassessing her future at a mid-range London hotel.
Instead,it’s given wild rumours fresh oxygen and left the impression conspiracy theorists may not have been way off the mark after all. Terrible optics.
Thanks to Kate’s admission that “like many amateur photographers,I do occasionally experiment with editing”,it’s not just the veracity of the photo that’s being questioned,but the whole royal business. As in,if you feel the need to tweak the sleeve of a little girl’s cardigan and the zip of a princess’ jacket,what else are you hiding that’s more important?
Was the photo really taken this week? Was it entirely fabricated? Why isn’t she wearing her wedding ring? Has her face from one photo been added to her body from another? Why didn’t anyone working for the most famous couple in the world say hold the bus,this photo won’t fly?
It has wider ramifications. When next the palace issues a Kate or Charles health update,how do we know they’re not telling porkies? Questions will be harder to wave away with a “nothing to see here”.
The whole brouhaha is catnip for critics and republicans to push their case that the royals have had their day and should pack up shop.
For the first time since Queen Elizabeth’s death,the palace is seriously on the back foot. Harry’s bookSpare caused headlines,but most of the derision about frostbitten todgers and broken dog bowls was directed at him.
Kategate hurts because until now,the Princess of Wales hasn’t put a foot wrong and the royals’ currency is public trust. Oh irony,that trust would be damaged by an average photo taken by Prince William of his wife and kids with the expressions of the unwary about to hit the downward slope of a rollercoaster.
The family has held on to their castles and jewels for centuries by using the awesome power of appearing to be that little shinier than everyone else. Normally the world makes it easy for them. They bowl up to chivvy along communities and we gush about their marvellous fashion,humanity,witticisms.
They live in a world where people suck up to them endlessly,in modern times mostly thanks to the steely sparkle which was the legacy of the late Queen. She was trusted. Believed.
And that’s the problem with Kate’s ham-fisted photoshopping. Why tinker with the shot at all? It was pointless.
Manipulating the photo has brought a world of pain to the princess and made her team look like they belong in the clown car. It’s so bad it almost feels like a massive stitch-up insider job. Kate may have fallen on her sword,but other more replaceable heads will roll.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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