Kate the Great
On January 9, 1982, Kate Middleton was born in Reading, England. Also on January 9, 1982, some 3,400 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, I was born in a town with absolutely no medieval abbeys to speak of: Flushing, Queens.
Thirty-six years later, Kate Middleton and my shared birthday is a convenient explanation for my undying and totally shameless love for her—why I’m the proud owner of a QVC replica of her 12-carat Ceylon sapphire engagement ring (and, full disclosure: her diamond oak-leaf-and-acorn royal wedding earrings, too); why I drink my morning coffee from a commemorative Kate and William mug; braved the definitive Plaza etiquette course on her social graces; slipped my pregnant self into the Banana Republic reproduction of her iconic blue Issa dress; and why my dear friend Helin and I once bought $250 tickets to a Brooklyn Nets game she’d be attending during a royal visit to New York, just to share air with her.
The fact that Kate and I are “birthday buddies” has given me ammunition, not that I needed any. It comes in handy when friends, relatives, and colleagues call me bananas, and they often do (I can’t hear them through my flowing, imitation Kate blowout). But it isn’t the real, true reason I’ve spent the last decade adoring Kate Middleton from afar. In fact, it’s because—and I guess this is why they call me crazy?—I fancy us soul sisters who are somehow cosmically linked, going through a parallel life together, one milestone at a time.
Kate and I weren’t just born on the same date, but we both met cute guys in our first year of college in 2001, dated them on and off in the ensuing years (making sure to do plenty of clubbing and revenge-dressing while on a break in 2007) before reuniting with them in 2008. In October 2010, Kate and William secretly got engaged in the Kenyan wild; they announced it that November 16—just a few days after my now-husband and I were engaged on November 12. (Did I save that week’s People cover for posterity, you ask? Why, yes, I did.) I also gleefully awoke at 5:30 a.m.—something I have not done since—to cry along with the royal wedding in April 2011, six months before getting married myself. And six months after Prince George arrived in 2013, we welcomed our first child, too—a little girl named Georgette. (Just kidding. Her name is Hayden.) There was no town crier trumpeting our news outside St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital on 10th Avenue, but bells were ringing in my heart—especially because at my baby shower, both my mother and best friend gave me the same G.H. Hurt blanket that Kate swaddled Prince George in when leaving St. Mary’s Hospital.
The spell was broken, so to speak, when Kate gave birth to Princess Charlotte in 2015—I didn’t dare have another baby until last year and, unlike her, I won’t be having any more. There are many other differences between us: her “apartment” is in a palace and has two kitchens and I’d never be caught dead in a hairnet—nor, for that matter, nude panty hose. Though, for the record, I still prefer to think she’s less basic and more rebellious at heart: remember that she was modeling a completely see-through panel of fabric masquerading as a dress when she she first wooed Prince William way back when.
But for the better part of my adult life, Kate and I—Cubic Zirconia Knockoff Kate—have shared it all. Or so I’ve imagined. (When she crouches down to her toddler’s level and appears to give him a death stare, I’m absolutely convinced we are kindred.) Sincerely, I’ve rooted for her—for her love story, her wedding, her becoming a mother—as I’ve found myself, jittery, preparing for the same experiences. I’ve imagined that if she could do it—whether getting married or getting bangs—so could I.
But I’ve also found myself defending her—and my love for her—time and time again. I’ve been called creepy and psychotic. I've been told that I should really focus my time and energy on the more meaningful people and substantive stories my work leads me towards, rather than those I’ve written about Kate. I’ve been chided as a silly woman for looking up to a false idol; a relic of a bygone era when monarchs mattered. Criticism of Kate Middleton tends to mirror that of the monarchy itself: When Kate and Prince William made the aforementioned royal visit to New York in 2014, Gawker overlooked their HRH titles and referred to them as tourists “Bill and Cathy Cambridge,” hilariously headlining a story about their meeting Beyoncé and Jay-Z: “King and Queen Make Time to Greet Unemployed Fan, Her Balding Husband.”
Then there are the inevitable feminist critiques: that Kate is a show pony who is often seen but seldom heard (true enough, the sound of her voice is about as rare as a solar eclipse), that she’s a glorified prisoner in a gilded cage, tasked primarily with baby-making and modeling pretty coats. For some people, Kate is the princess problem personified, at a time when many modern parents, understandably, in the effort to motivate their daughters to think outside the oppressive, sexist limits of society, would really rather they look up not to Ariel and Cinderella but Malala or Marie Curie.
I tell myself that Kate has plenty of agency. She was intelligent enough to understand—to the extent that a “commoner”/Party Pieces heiress could—the implications of going royal. I take heart in her increasing philanthropic work—particularly on behalf of children and teen’s mental health issues in a country notorious for its stiff upper lip. Like Princess Diana before her, she has the opportunity to make a massive mark—far more, I’d think, than many of the celebrities and reality stars that are worshipped the world over.
But this vein of criticism is not so easy for me to dismiss; it has a way of nagging at me that even gazing into my cloudy faux sapphire replica ring won’t fix. Like many other feminists determined to raise their children as such, I wrestle with what it means to look up to princesses—to emphasize perfect bodies, mermaid hair and male saviors. There is so much of that swirling around in our society as it is. But how could I ever tell my daughter she’s not allowed to twirl around in tiaras and mini Belle ball gowns when I’m obsessed with a real-life princess myself?
That tends to raise another question: Why do I, or my daughter, or any other women or girls, have to choose? Can’t Belle and Kate and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amelia Earhart each have their place in our hearts and minds? Not to venture into sappy commercial territory, but can’t we dream and dance and sparkle and also aspire to be Supreme Court justices and scientists? In an ideal world, maybe women and girls would only idolize storied STEM heroines; they’d have Ada Lovelace–themed birthday parties instead of Disney Princess ones. But fantasies aren’t always feminist. They are, by definition, escapes from reality. And I don’t know how policing women and girls (like monitoring their vocal fry) over what or who they love amounts to empowering or inspiring them. I think often about something feminist author Roxane Gay wrote in her 2014 New York Times essay on her enduring attachment to The Bachelor: “I am supposed to be above such flights of fantasy, but I am not,” Gay wrote. “I am enamored of fairy tales.”
Still, in the interest of amassing anecdotal research and further absolving myself of any lingering shreds of shame, I contacted several smart, sound, feminist women who share my Kate mania and asked them to please psychoanalyze themselves.
Johanna Cox Moran—a self-described “fashion writer on a mom break”—said she never really got the fuss over Kate until she and her family moved to London in 2014, but she has since been converted by Kate’s one-woman bucking of tradition in what Moran calls Britain’s “deeply classist” society. “Kate could have sent Prince George anywhere—the most upper crust, elitist, away-from-the-brown-people school, but she didn’t,” Moran told me. “She wants her kids to be more like her. She shops at relatively affordable places. She re-wears clothes.”
For my friend Catherine, a teacher, royal worship is a cherished family tradition. Her late mother, Ann, was “obsessed with Princess Diana (in a healthy way),” Catherine wrote me in an email, collecting Diana books and People covers and even writing Princess Diana a letter during her split from Prince Charles in which she recommended that she “not let the bastards wear her down.” Ann “loved Di, of course, for her beauty and fashion,” Catherine added, “but also because she was a renegade for the royal family in many ways, standing up for what she believed in and staying true to herself and her children.”
Now Catherine’s own love for Kate Middleton is a link to her mom. “Like Princess Diana, my mom left this world way too early. So now my love for Kate means even more, because with every photo, tiara, pregnancy, et cetera, I think, Mom would love this!” she says. “As someone who also lost a mother, my obsession with William and Harry has grown as well as they have begun to publicly discuss the loss of Diana and the importance of mental health—and I know Kate is behind that.”
Yet another Kate-obsessed friend—who is so enthusiastic she once purchased a pair of Monica Vinader earrings after the Duchess was photographed in them—admits her love for Kate is complex, and sometimes contradictory. “I believe in strong, independent women, especially in today’s day and age. My mother taught me that you need to rescue yourself,” she said. “But I think many women secretly want to be rescued by a prince and whisked off to a castle, just like we heard about when we were young. In Kate’s case, this actually happened.”
Not to mention, she adds, Kate “has a loveliness, that you just don’t see much of in 2018. She’s a breath of fresh air. Who in this country do we have to look up to?”
Which brings us to the theory that, now more than ever, Kate-gazing, like royal-watching at large, is “a flash of color in a rather gray world,” as Emma Bridgewater, founder of the British ceramics company currently crafting “Harry and Megan are engaged” mugs, recently told The New York Times.
It was confirmed by Jeetendr Sehdev, author of The Kim Kardashian Principle and an adjunct professor who studies celebrity influence at The University of Southern California. “I think a lot of people today want to retreat,” Sehdev told me. “There’s a lot going on in the world and they want to take a step back. They need to go to their safe place, their imaginative space—and I think that’s where Kate kicks in for you.”
Yes, I’d promptly confessed my delusional Kate Middletwinning to Sehdev before calling his office, in hopes he’d have some illuminating insight into my condition. As a passionate academic researcher of celebrity worship, he was pretty nonplussed (“What did your therapist tell you?” he joked), and actually confirmed the value of venerating a celebrity idol, especially in today’s uncertain world. Amid terrorism and gun violence and political tumult, celebrities are only increasingly becoming more valuable, Sehdev said, because they represent a fuzzy, familiar constant.
“The power of celebrities comes from the fact that they give permission for fans to define them in whatever way that they need to,” Sehdev said. “Kate allows you to have all the upside of an intimate relationship with none of the downside of a real relationship.”
Looking back, in our years of imaginary best friendship, Kate has never failed me. Rather, she’s amplified some of the happiest and most exciting moments of my life—sparking global wedding buzz before our weddings, and baby fever before our babies.
“She’s your soul sister, your partner in crime, but the reality of the situation is that you don’t even know her,” Sehdev continued. “I mean, it might probably well be the case that if you do meet Kate in real life, you might not like her at all.”
I seriously doubt that—but I can only hope and pray that one day I'll know for myself; that this girl born on January 9, 1982 meets that girl born on January 9, 1982. Kensington Palace, please prepare a fainting couch. Until then, I’ll be practicing my curtsy.
Love Stories is a series about love in all its forms, with one new essay appearing each day for the first two weeks of February, until Valentine’s Day.
