Jibes at pear princess leave a sour taste

May 5 2008 by Our Correspondent, Western Mail

THE minute Princess Beatrice was revealed to be a pear, the coven of female columnists started sucking on lemons. After being papped in her bikini, the curvy youngster looks set to suffer the same kind of misogyny dressed up as waspish comment that her “Duchess of Pork” mother endured.

“Can’t someone buy the poor girl a sarong? For her sake, as well as ours,” sneered Allison Pearson in The Daily Mail.

It was disappointing coming from as an intelligent a writer as Llanelli-born Pearson. It was also somewhat ironic. She is the author of the international best-seller I Don’t Know How She Does It, the novel that wittily explores the demands of modern womanhood.

Well the pressure to conform to an idealised body image is among those demands – particularly for girls like 19-year-old Beatrice, who are barely out of adolescence. But as a member of the Royal Family, the princess will be seen as fair game for the kind of cruel scrutiny that keeps entire magazines in business. Sisterhood goes out of the window when the body in question is attached to a famous face.

Women bitching about other women has become the most depressing form of 21st century journalism. But let she who is without cellulite, stretch marks and saddlebags type the first insult.

That should stop the rotten apples crushing the pears.