Travis Ludlow also got lots of press. I hadn't seen as much nitpicking against him, but someone did manage to dig up a thread from PoA questioning all his choices too. :-/
Old f***s like many of us in PoA get insecure and quarrelsome whenever we see a young person getting attention for something we also do — I know I get that way with IT as well as aviation.
But poor Zara has committed the double crime of getting attention for flying while being young and female, so god help her in the pilot forums (or with grumpy old aviation journalists like Paul Bertorelli, who wrote a whole article patronising and belittling her).
Fortunately, young girls dreaming of a future in aviation will pay more attention to Zara than to us. Or at least, I hope so. Recreational general aviation will fade out and die if it stays a mostly old, white male pursuit, because we're dying off and there aren't enough new pilots coming in to replace us