This month, the Pritzker Prize will be given to architect Zaha Hadid in a ceremony at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. When she mounts the stage to claim her prize, she joins a worldwide panoply of creative giants. And, by the way, Zaha Hadid happens to be a British citizen born in Iraq, and a woman—the first to receive the accolade in the organization’s 26-year history. The 21st century has arrived.

While it may be gratifying to see a leading architect so lionized, and time for a woman to win, this particular adulation came with a headache: When the media’s first wave of stories hit the stands, Hadid’s gender dominated the coverage. Writers insisted on treating the architect differently from her male predecessors. One article, particularly, stands out. It was striking that it occupied the Style section of The New York Times Magazine on March 28. Immediately stigmatized, Hadid (and by association her architecture) had thus been relegated to the second-tier, and her achievement regarded as superficial. The author, instead, reminded us of the quirks of her personality. She has been, he claimed with a kind of justifying pride, a “diva,” as if that designation, so freighted with the unstable artistic emotion (read female), accorded her star status. The story then went on to discuss the changes in personality that have accompanied her increasing maturity. Would male architects be subject to such amateur psychoanalysis? The author then treats us to a description of the architect relaxing, well-oiled, by a swimming pool in Miami Beach. Save us!