Author Calls Kate Middleton a "Machine-Made Doll"

Never mind her morning sickness, Kate Middleton woke up to something this week that she may even get more nauseous about.

In a recent lecture on the book Royal Bodies, which examines how royals are viewed in the public eye, esteemed British author Hilary Mantel criticized the Duchess of Cambridge as a "machine-made doll" bought and paid for by the royal family. Needless to say, some people are screaming bloody hell(!) over the eviscerating remarks.

"I saw Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung," the author remarked, and "a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore."

And according to Mantel, now that Kate's pregnant, she'll be looked as one whose sole purpose is to breed and give birth.

If those comments don't make Prince William's hairline recede even more, Mantel goes on by saying that Middleton merely exudes good manners, "appeared to have been designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished."

Aside from Her Highness encroaching on fembot territory, Mantel also points out Middleton is no Princess Diana. She is "irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character."

But to be fair, the author wasn't tearing a part the young princess because she had a personal vendetta against her; she was trying to explain the problem with our tabloid obsession and dehumanization of the royal family.

"Cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty. It can easily become fatal. We don't cut off the heads of royal ladies these days, but we do sacrifice them, and we did memorably drive one to destruction a scant generation ago," Mantel said. "I'm not asking for censorship. I'm not asking for pious humbug and smarmy reverence. I'm asking us to back off and not be brutes."

Still, offended detractors of the author's remarks, spoke out.

Telegraph editor Emma Barnett felt that Mantel's scathing depiction of Middleton was "not only unfounded, but incredibly cheap."

"[The Duchess of Cambridge] has ample time to develop her public persona and become a fully-fledged role model if needs be," Barnett said, adding that the princess doesn't have the luxury of responding to such inflammatory comments. "As a fully paid-up member of the royal family, she can only respond by doing the very same thing Mantel has criticized her for: staying quiet."

Source: CNN

What say you? Do you think the author has a good point, or do you find her comments royally offensive?