Nudie Pix Signal Pippa Middleton's Official Ascent To Celebrity

Today we received an email from a photo agency with the subject line, “Exclusive Pictures — Pippa Topless.” It’s official: In no time at all, Pippa Middleton has almost fully completed the trajectory in the “new celebrity” arc.

It starts quite innocently: Curiosity, praise, fascination! (Who is Pippa? What does she do? Look how pretty! Check out that dress!) Then, quickly, things get personal. (Pippa’s ass was named “Rear Of The Year”; some speculated that Prince Harry had become smitten with her.) Then, a mere week after her sister’s wedding, images of Pippa dancing in a bra surfaced. Or, more accurately: Were dug up from under some pile, scanned and sold. Today, some “previously unseen exclusive” photographs of Pippa’s nipples have emerged.

What’s notable about the pictures is not that you can see Pippa’s bare breasts. It’s that they are dated September 2006. The location: Ibiza. Pippa was on a yacht with her mother, father, brother James and sister Kate — as well as Kate’s boyfriend, Prince William. Someone — either the photographer or the agency — held on to these images for five years, and released them at just the “right” moment.

Pippa Middleton has been on the social scene in the UK for years — an agency search will pull up shots of her in the front row at fashion shows, laughing at benefits, or hurrying to the Tatler 300th anniversary party — but only now, following her “spotlight-stealing” appearance at the royal wedding, does the public supposedly “care” about her areolae.

What can Pippa expect next? If we’ve learned anything from gossip blogs and Star magazine, a former boyfriend will “come forward” (be paid) to dish about her sexual exploits; narratives about her weight and proximity to a marriage proposal will be told. If she’s lucky, she’ll never be associated with anything unseemly — racist remarks, Nazi enthusiasm, illicit affair — and will live hounded by paprazzi and included in “bikini body” stories. Just until she gets married and/or old. Eventually the public will move on to some other new, hot young thing, and Pippa’s nips will be history.