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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Kate Middleton is a role model for me?

519 replies

BlueBookBag · 03/10/2021 20:21

I like the way she looks, so pretty and stylish but classic and simple at the same time.

Slim but toned and athletic figure, meanwhile I could lose a few kg.

Her personality seems refined and elegant, you will never catch her sharing controversial opinions or offending views.

She seems to be a supportive wife and mother

Seems overall to live such an elegant life.

AIBU? To want to be more like Kate and see her as a role model?

OP posts:
lllllllllll · 07/10/2021 13:46

So solid middle class.

Trust funds are surely more upper class than middle. I consider myself to be middle class and don't know anyone with a trust fund.

madisonbridges · 07/10/2021 13:46

There's gossip and there's known fact. It's when people such as @juliaca presents gossip as known fact that is wrong.

Posh & Becks are very litigious. They sue over everything. That's how the papers knew the Rebecca Loos stuff was true because they didn't sue. I guess the RF would be in a similar situation.

Blossomtoes · 07/10/2021 13:47

The money (the trust fund for her education) came from a relative who was a mill owner in Leeds and lost his sons in the 1st WW. So solid middle class.

So we’re going to erase her pitman great grandfather because he doesn’t fit the narrative? And her mother who wanted to train as a teacher but didn’t as her parents needed her out at work at 16?

LemonPeonies · 07/10/2021 14:01

She's not "slim and toned", to me she looks severely under weight and while she may be attractive now, she already looks 15 years older because of this.

DrSbaitso · 07/10/2021 15:10

@Blossomtoes

The money (the trust fund for her education) came from a relative who was a mill owner in Leeds and lost his sons in the 1st WW. So solid middle class.

So we’re going to erase her pitman great grandfather because he doesn’t fit the narrative? And her mother who wanted to train as a teacher but didn’t as her parents needed her out at work at 16?

What narrative? She has a working class ancestor from two generations ago on one side, but money was earned in the century or so since then, as happened with many people, and she's got aristocratic links on her father's side. She wasn't born titled, but she was most definitely born upper class.

If anything, they've tried to play down her aristocratic links and make her the "commoner Queen" because it was thought that that made William look less snobby and more in touch with the people.

You can call her a social climber, but even a duchess would be marrying up by marrying the future king. She was always going to marry a rich toff!

DrSbaitso · 07/10/2021 15:11

@LemonPeonies

She's not "slim and toned", to me she looks severely under weight and while she may be attractive now, she already looks 15 years older because of this.
She doesn't look 55.
madisonbridges · 07/10/2021 15:17

@LemonPeonies

She's not "slim and toned", to me she looks severely under weight and while she may be attractive now, she already looks 15 years older because of this.
I wish I'd looked like her when I was 55!
Blossomtoes · 07/10/2021 15:38

She was always going to marry a rich toff!

Of course she was. The person who really punched above her weight in the marriage stakes was her mother. Imagine having to start work at 16 because your parents couldn’t afford teacher training college, even with a full grant, and ending up married to a multimillionaire and grandmother to a future king. Now that’s what I call a fairy tale!

lllllllllll · 07/10/2021 16:37

She wasn't born titled, but she was most definitely born upper class.

I wouldn't say she was upper class - that to me is the landed gentry and aristocrats. The Middletons are upper-middle class.

julieca · 07/10/2021 16:42

Re. Gossip discussion - when we are told that these people we fund are our role models, of course, we are entitled to loom at their behaviour. So no cheating on your wife is not an example of a role model.

peasoup8 · 07/10/2021 16:46

I think I would love Kate's life, for these reasons:

  • She has several stunningly beautiful homes that are fully maintained by a team of housekeepers, gardeners and whatever else and always look immaculate. She won't have to do a stroke of housework ever again if she doesn't want to - or worry about things like a broken oven like I have this week.
  • She has another team who ensure that she looks fabulous at all times and she and her family get access to the very best healthcare there is - no phoning the GP and being stuck on hold for 40 minutes while you're stressing because your baby is unwell and no one will help.
  • She has a team of chefs who will ensure the food she eats is absolutely delicious and healthy - and her children get that too.
  • She can holiday anywhere in the world in the most unimaginably luxurious places.
  • If she ever needs a break from the kids she can just hand them to the nanny and relax.
  • She has no money worries whatsoever - money (or lack of) is the biggest stress in my life, I can't imagine how liberating it must be not to worry about that, ever.
  • It must be absolutely fascinating to have the insight she does into the inner workings of the royal family and to know what really goes on behind the scenes and what they're all like.

The only bit of her life I wouldn't want is the no doubt constant security presence they must have. Although I'm sure they're left alone at home, it's not like they'd have guards standing next to them in the kitchen or anything.

julieca · 07/10/2021 16:50

Carole Middleton did the classic route out of poverty for a pretty young woman then. Air hostess was a glamorous job and if you worked in business and upper class, you could meet rich men who frequently flew your route. And even if you didn't, other rich men wanted to date air hostesses. That was her route out of poverty.
It is probably hard for young people who only know low-cost airlines and cabin crew to fully understand how air hostesses were seen then. But it really was the equivalent of boxing for young men as a route out of poverty.
Also totally unremarkable then for families not to be able to afford for a 16 year old to stay on at school. The big push back then was to increase the number of pupils staying on from poor backgrounds. Which is why when people talk about university grants being free, it did not benefit those from poor backgrounds in the main. At my secondary school virtually everyone left at 16 for a job or apprenticeship if lucky. At schools in better off areas, most will have stayed on though.

madisonbridges · 07/10/2021 18:49

@julieca

Re. Gossip discussion - when we are told that these people we fund are our role models, of course, we are entitled to loom at their behaviour. So no cheating on your wife is not an example of a role model.
Keep repeating the same gossip doesn't make it the truth. 🙄
IcedPurple · 07/10/2021 19:08

@julieca

Carole Middleton did the classic route out of poverty for a pretty young woman then. Air hostess was a glamorous job and if you worked in business and upper class, you could meet rich men who frequently flew your route. And even if you didn't, other rich men wanted to date air hostesses. That was her route out of poverty. It is probably hard for young people who only know low-cost airlines and cabin crew to fully understand how air hostesses were seen then. But it really was the equivalent of boxing for young men as a route out of poverty. Also totally unremarkable then for families not to be able to afford for a 16 year old to stay on at school. The big push back then was to increase the number of pupils staying on from poor backgrounds. Which is why when people talk about university grants being free, it did not benefit those from poor backgrounds in the main. At my secondary school virtually everyone left at 16 for a job or apprenticeship if lucky. At schools in better off areas, most will have stayed on though.
Despite the 'doors to manual' jibes, Carole Middleton was never an air hostess. She was ground staff for BA, which didn't quite have the same 'glamorous' connotations, even in the 1970s.
YoungGiftedPlump · 07/10/2021 19:13

@lllllllllll

So solid middle class.

Trust funds are surely more upper class than middle. I consider myself to be middle class and don't know anyone with a trust fund.

Victorian middle class. Certainly not upper class if a mill owner.
YoungGiftedPlump · 07/10/2021 19:14

@Blossomtoes

The money (the trust fund for her education) came from a relative who was a mill owner in Leeds and lost his sons in the 1st WW. So solid middle class.

So we’re going to erase her pitman great grandfather because he doesn’t fit the narrative? And her mother who wanted to train as a teacher but didn’t as her parents needed her out at work at 16?

That was the other side of the family.
Blossomtoes · 07/10/2021 19:17

That was the other side of the family.

And? Does her mother’s family not count?

julieca · 07/10/2021 19:18

@IcedPurple thanks, I had just assumed.
And that "joke" is awful. Looking down on someone who actually works for a living.

KaptanKatanga · 07/10/2021 20:21

Not sure about the discussion around her class. Mother was British Airways groundwork employee, dad Internet salesman. How's that upper middle class? Just because the business went well and they went to private schools? It's middle class to me, certainly not upper middle. Anyone can have both links to royalty and to peasants if you go far back enough...

julieca · 07/10/2021 20:29

Some people have zero links to royalty. Virtually everyone has some links to peasants even if its through children outside of marriage.

derxa · 07/10/2021 20:37

@KaptanKatanga

Not sure about the discussion around her class. Mother was British Airways groundwork employee, dad Internet salesman. How's that upper middle class? Just because the business went well and they went to private schools? It's middle class to me, certainly not upper middle. Anyone can have both links to royalty and to peasants if you go far back enough...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Middleton_(British_businessman) Michael Middleton has some fascinating family connections en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupton_family
Kolingpursey · 07/10/2021 20:59

Distant being the operative word in those articles... If one needs to trace back some procession photos to claim some distant, might be, connection, it tells it all really...I know the daily mail really wants it to be, but come on....They're firmly middle of middle, nothing wrong with being so anyway...

madisonbridges · 07/10/2021 21:33

I've never seen anyone in real life bother about class like MNers.

julieca · 07/10/2021 21:34

@madisonbridges of course you have. Some do look down on others because of class. Like the doors to manual "jokes".

madisonbridges · 07/10/2021 21:47

[quote julieca]@madisonbridges of course you have. Some do look down on others because of class. Like the doors to manual "jokes".[/quote]
No, I really don't. I have absolutely no idea of what class people term themselves as. I have never, ever had a discussion about what class different people are. I hear WC used in terms of politics but it just isn't an issue. Here it's an active term of abuse, usually against MC or UC. I guess people are nice and not nice in all classes so why do people care?