The Duchess Down Under

Oh, you knew it had to happen. An Australian paper owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has followed the lead of German tabloid Bild and published a photo of the Duchess of Cambridge’s latest wardrobe malfunction during her visit down under with husband and baby Prince George. I am avoiding the obvious puns here. The British media has taken the position that publishing the picture would be disrespectful, but the foreign press apparently disagrees. More here from the Guardian. The Duchess has come in for a fair amount of criticism for not being a little more careful, not just because she doesn’t weight her hems as does her grandmother-in-law, the Queen, but because she, ahem, wasn’t wearing much underneath. Meanwhile, the photographer, who isn’t a professional, is donating fees from the snap, to a charity.  While the photo was taken while the Duchess was in public (as opposed to those infamous photos of her sunbathing topless last year, which were taken on private property), they clearly show a part of the body that women usually intend to keep covered, and in which human beings have an expectation of privacy. Should individuals, even famous ones, expect photographs of their private regions to be splashed across the media, especially when those private regions are exposed because of a gust of wind? Should the photographer have refrained from selling or publishing the photo? Knowing that it was likely to be worth a lot of money, how many people would have done so?