Why we secretly want to look at Pippa Middleton's wedding photos

Why did Pippa Middleton's wedding cause sane people to gorge on gossip magazines? Photo / AP

It’s envy, plain old envy — but we do have a defence.

I tried very hard not to admire Pippa's wedding photos - or her bottom.

Afterall I, like many of my friends and colleagues, like to think of myself as a serious career woman with a half-decent brain. A journalist for goodness sake, renowned for being one of the most cynical species on Earth.

I don't subscribe to women's magazines or read trashy novels. Instead, I read newspapers and news apps, and load my Kindle with anything on the Man Booker Prize shortlist.

Stuffed in the bookshelf in my bedroom is an eclectic collection of reading to prove my point : Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries glowers next to Janet Frame's Gorse is Not People; the somewhat odd door stopper, Hauraki Murakami's IQ84, Books one, two and three rubs shoulders with some easy-read Bryson and Courtney, The Goldfinch, Cutting for Stone and The Life of Pi. Next are both a novel and a biography about Arabist and desert adventurer Gertrude Bell.

One afternoon I wandered into the St Heliers library and came out with The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia by Andrei Lankov. Read it from cover to cover too.

So why, then, did I elbow family members out of the way last weekend so I could spread the two Sunday papers across the breakfast table and pour over Pippa's Middleton wedding photos? Oh! That dress! And the veil! Too much tan? ...Oooooh! Look at those sweeeeet little flower girls (who else can see Princess Margaret's daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones (now Chatto) peering out of Princess Charlotte's determined little face?) and those adorable page boys. Not a hair out of place, not a muddy mark on those gold breeches.

Image 1 of 18: Pippa Middleton and James Matthews kiss after their wedding at St Mark's Church in Englefield, England. Photo / AP

A royalist friend from Dubai rang to coo over the Daily Mail's gorgeous photos. I rushed for the computer. Sigh, another fix.

The following night I chose a longish queue in the supermarket so I could look through Woman's Day wedding offering. I ended up buying the magazine because I knew my sister, a super-smart marketing manager for an airline, would pour over them too.

And then, during the week, I opened the Herald and was struck with guilt when I read the wise words of my colleague, columnist Deborah Hill Cone. What nonsense this Middleton wedding was, Hill Cone scoffed. Peeved, she was, to find her newsfeed infested with images of the faux royal wedding.

She used brave words like "uncomfortable," "disturbing," and "oppressive," describing the nuptials as "a shallow pageant of snobbery and privilege" and a "parade of heteronormative, white, thin couples in silly hats". How I wish I'd thought of that.

And I began to wonder why I wanted to admire, and examine in details, those pictures. I came up with a few "isms." Escapism, romanticism, voyeurism. And aspirational, that's always a good one.

It's none of the above, Auckland psychologist Mary Farrell tells me firmly.

It's envy, plain old envy. And there are three lines of defence against this base emotion, she says.

The first line of defence is idealisation (that must be mine). "Oh, aren't they gorgeous, just look at her clothes, doesn't she look beautiful."

The second line is defensiveness. Those people say things like "Good God, I'm not envious of them! I wouldn't want their lives!"

And the third one is spoiling. "She's too skinny, too tanned. Don't you think her face looks hard behind that smile? And look at that idiot of a husband, he looks a right toff."

According to Farrell we're going to have one of those three reactions because we're basically envious of people with that much money, that much attention and that much beauty.

And she's right.

If I think back to the friends and colleagues I've discussed this with over the past week, every one of them had one of those three reactions. In fact the quotes above come from them.

People can't help being both envious of and intrigued about the royals and
celebrities, Farrell says. That's why they watch programmes like Made in Chelsea starring Pippa Middleton's brother-in-law Spencer Matthews.

" People watch that (programme) because they've got so much money they can do exactly what they want. If they feel like going on a safari they bugger off on a safari."

Pippa Middleton and James Matthews kiss after their wedding. Photo / AP

Top Auckland hairdresser Grant Bettjeman watches high-powered businesswomen, lawyers and other professionals come into his salon with their laptops, ready to do an hour's work. Instead, within minutes, they've closed the lid and have their noses in the latest Hello magazine.

Bettjeman, whose customers have included Trelise Cooper and Kiri Te Kanawa, thinks its escapism, looking at a life they can only imagine, a moment where they can admire beauty and glamour, be it a couture outfit or a fabulous chateau.

And was Bettjeman interested in Pippa's wedding?

"OF COURSE!" he shrieks down the phone.

"We were interested because of her hair, what was the dress like? Her veil. What did he (the bridegroom James Matthews) wear?

"And then you recognise the royal family and beautiful little kids. I think you'd be hard pushed to find many people who wouldn't have sighed when all those little kids bubbled out of the church all in their little beige outfits. It was just so sweet."

And a final word from a colleague at the office.

It's envy, she says. " We all want Theresa May's brain but Pippa's butt."

So come on Harry and Meghan, get cracking. We need another wedding to make us feel envious again.