The fascination with Pippa Middleton's behind has taken an absurd turn. Etiquette expert Stephane Bern is now insisting that Kate Middleton's little sister wore a false rear end for the Royal Wedding in 2011. Yes, Bern is basically charging that Pippa Middleton pulled a Nicki Minaj and got a butt implant (albeit, a non permanent one.) "Of course she had a false bottom,” Bern stated."I repeat it: she had a false bottom. You take her away from that and she has normal buttocks."
I remember when the Royal Wedding happened and suddenly Pippa's behind was the talk of the town. Her "buttocks" looked normal to me, but to most of the internet they were extraordinary. I never really got it. It wasn't like she was wearing an overly-tight body-hugging dress. But still people found a way to objectify her when all she wanted to do was see her sister get married and participate in the ceremony. Bern thinks Pippa was more aware of her role in the wedding though, and that's why she may have resorted to adding to her assets. "It was an optical illusion," Bern said. "She knew there were a billion people watching. It was the moment to show it."
Still I ask you, show what? That she has a body and she's wearing a dress?
I didn't understand the fuss in 2011, and I don't understand why it's coming back up now. Plus, who cares if she was wearing a false bottom or not? It doesn't give anyone the right to objectify her figure like that.
After the fact Pippa must have heard about the situation because she mentioned it earlier this year saying, "As I have found out, recognition has its upside, its downside and—you may say—its backside."
Sure, she made a joke about it. But the reality is that this is a woman who was thrust into the public spotlight because of choices her sister made. She's a woman who went to a wedding in a simple, elegant gown and was forced to endure comments about what her butt looked like. And now she has people accusing her of not really even owning what everyone made a fuss about in the first place.
In the end it's all just objectification, and as much as people try to make that not a big deal—it is. Tomi-Ann Roberts, Ph.D, a psychology professor at Colorado College says that minimizing a woman to one part of her body is “almost like killing the breathing woman. Now she is truly just an object and we don’t have to think about the living animal that a human being is.”
Pippa may have laughed it off when she made that comment, but underneath the playful banter is the truth: the world took a day that should have only been full of happiness for a marriage and turned it into an objectification-fest over a woman who was just wearing a dress and existing. But apparently women still can't do that without getting unwanted attention; it just goes to show how much work our society still needs to truly treat women with respect.
