Here in the good old U.S. of A., we don’t have royalty. We have celebrities and we have socialites, both of whom we for some unfathomable reason treat as royalty; but alas, princes and princesses and golden carriages and glass slippers are not native to this land. Meanie suspects that this has something to do with the fact that the colonists who landed here once upon a time were trying to escape an oppressive monarchy in the first place; but that, kittens, may be neither here nor there.

In any event, the lack of a home-based monarchy has done nothing to squash our fascination with all things royal. In fact, just as we have a tendency to turn celebrities into royalty, so too do we like to turn royalty into celebrities. Perhaps this is why the pool boy and the butler—er, we—hang onto every shred of news about Prince William and Kate Middleton that crosses the pond.

Take, for instance, yesterday’s leading headline in Royal News: Duchess Catherine visited the Robert Blair primary school in the Islington neighborhood of London to find out more about a charity called The Art Room—only to discover that none of the school children thought she looked like a princess should. Kate, you see, had dressed down for the occasion in jeans and what the Brits charmingly call a “jumper” (that’s a sweater for you uncultured heathens); but according to the Daily Mail, the all the bewildered young ones could do was repeatedly inquire as to where her dress was. And of course, barbaric Yankees that we are, we jumped all over this piece of news. No matter that it had less to do about the actual charity visit and more about what dear Kate happened to be wearing during it.

But kittens, Meanie thinks there’s a bigger issue at work here. What, really, does a princess look like? Does a princess look like this?

Or this?

Read Mean Betty: Demi's Not Taking The Divorce Sobbing Into Her Tissues!

Or this?

Or this?

But here, kittens, is the rub: At the end of the day, does it really, honestly matter? Meanie is prepared to answer that question with a resounding no. Ultimately, a princess can look like all of these people, or she can look like none of them. She can wear a big poofy dress, or she can wear armor, or she can wear normal, everyday clothing. Kate is an interesting case because she is simply an ordinary woman who fell in love with a man who happened to be of royal blood. She fell so much in love with him that she was willing to sacrifice what most people would consider a “normal life.” In doing so, she has not only had to learn the royal way of things—how to conduct oneself at political events, how to handle the charity work required of the royal family, which spoon to use for which course (always work from the outside in, kittens!), and so on—but moreover, she has also had to learn how to navigate living under the constant scrutiny of the public eye. But at heart, she’s still just a woman, and she’s handling her princess-ly duties admirably—especially considering that she is not a Pretty Pretty Princess, nor a warrior princess, nor Princess Grace or Queen Noor. The moral of the story, kittens, is that no matter what Kate is wearing, Meanie still thinks she looks like a princess because she behaves like a princess.

Though Meanie does admit that she could have chosen a different color for the sweater.

xo,

Mean Betty

Photos 2, 3, 4, 5