To All The Meghan Markle Haters...
Dearest Reader,
Years ago I learned a hack into my own sense of equanimity: I discovered that when certain slow, beautiful songs that I usually adore become “impossible” for me to listen to, something is off. Essentially I discovered that, for me personally, when I cannot tolerate stillness or music that evokes deeper, more delicate emotion in any way, I’m out of alignment. With this in mind, I see Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s latest streaming venture With Love, Meghan on Netflix, as a kind of Rorschach test. I won’t claim the series is the height of entertainment or lifestyle/DIY programming, but I think one’s reaction to it may reveal more about one’s relationship to silence, stillness, appreciation of nature, well-being and ease than anything else. At least that’s my broad impression of why Meghan Markle (as I prefer to call her because of the alliteration alone, though she is a Sussex now) grates some people’s nerves so much. Also I do think she may be an ambassador of “the soft life” which is comparable to, but quite different from being a "trad wife.”
“Trad wife” lifestyle, as I’ve written about before and likely will again, implies a married woman’s deference to her partner in an overtly patriarchal relationship dynamic. Whereas, “the soft life,” which started within the Nigerian influencer community, is more of an emphasis on a upper class or upwardly mobile, tranquil, intentional lifestyle that a woman prioritizes alone or in whatever union she builds with her partner—like traveling across the globe in total comfort for pleasure to building a rooted life of luxury or convenience with minimal stress. The main emphasis of “the soft life” is a quality of life that is easeful particularly for the woman in the relationship, prioritizing intentionality, boundaries and self care among what I perceive as material preoccupation with a certain quality of life.
The soft woman’s partner is clearly expected to be an equal or provider in cultivating this enviable lifestyle. In Meghan Markle’s case, I think she’s living the soft life in equal partnership with Prince Harry after a great deal of suffering. This simple fact—that they are happily married and living with relative ease—makes some people really mad. I do question “the soft life” because it feels a bit classist and wholly unrealistic at scale. Nevertheless, I respect the question it’s trying to answer: Is there a world where black women aren’t burdened to be strong all the time? Where self-care and ease are a priority as much as anything else? I get the allure of addressing these questions through “the soft life.”
When I think of it, I know very few black people who are stressing over what Meghan Markle is doing or isn’t doing. But I’m increasingly puzzled by and amazed at the amount of negative attention Meghan gets online because everywhere she is in the world, people seem incredibly charmed by her. Last year I wrote a piece, The British Royal Rabbit Hole, on three women of royalty and the stress of that path looking at the late Princess Diana, Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales who is in remission from cancer at 43-years-old and Meghan Makle. Meghan’s experience in royal life didn’t lead to an untimely public death or cancer scares, but has evolved into a pathological animosity from white people with constant undertones of white supremacist outrage with credible threats that contributed to her formal departure from royal life. In short, I think Meghan Markle’s smart, polished, black, carefree nature infuriates a solid section of white people (for example, Brits on TV and in the press are often judgmental or pointedly unkind towards the Duchess) while everyone else vacillates between adoration and indifference.
I recently saw a mixed race comedian who I can’t remember by name (sorry!) do a funny bit about how white people often think that when a black person and white person have a child, that child’s very existence will cure racism. She insists to humorous applause, more astutely than myself, that the mixed-race child comes to represent the reality of racism at that time, not the transcendence beyond it. All the unhealed stuff in society comes out just as much as the beauty of the love that created them.
I think the sight of a black woman, especially with white heritage, married to a literal Prince from the British royal family; who had her own career and life before meeting her beloved AND has a black mother who teaches yoga (for God’s sake!) — that is too much to bear. Just take a sobering look at modern racism in Britain and the United States. The British were so committed to their unique cocktail of racism and unwilling to recognize their imperial decline that they left the European Union and shattered their economy with Brexit in June 2016. To be fair, low information voters were effectively misled by wealthy political opportunists like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and others who peddled convenient narratives over complicated truth.
Today the UK is economically isolated, there is a literal housing shortage and affordability crisis with people increasingly homeless or unable to pay their heat and/or gas bill. In late July 2024 they had a literal race riot that lasted for weeks fueled by widespread far-right, anti-immigrant disinformation following a tragic crime. The British working class struggle to admit they’re manipulated by the populist far-right and political opportunists have no intention of resolving any policy issues so everyone blames “the other” and claims false victories through adrenalizing acts of violence and/or cruelty. The British Labor Party, equivalent to the Democrats, have no serious strategy or visionary leadership to forcefully shift political trends.
In the United States a recently convicted, often bankrupt businessman was elected president for the second time over a totally qualified Black and Asian woman former state attorney general and vice president because...?
As the nation careens towards a recession that seems inevitable because of an on-again-off-again Trump global trade war causing rampant uncertainty, I wonder if America can continue to ignore the core issues overtaking the nation. We’re dealing with a plutocratic oligarchical kleptocracy—born out of a racist capitalist social order that weaponizes class, gender, ability and so on to the detriment of most. So called “anti-woke” haters were so fixated on excluding diverse voices in government and civil society that they’ve welcomed a wolf into the henhouse…and they forgot we are ALL fowl.
Most experts contend that that trade tariffs will only raise costs for the consumer and that reigniting American manufacturing akin to 19th or mid 20th century levels is illogical for a litany of reasons including a looming workforce crisis “accelerated by AI, compounded by tariffs, and amplified by economic volatility” as soundly reasoned in Fortune Magazine. Undoing over 50 years of globalization is self-destructive for America and it remains to be seen what all this market volatility, isolating the United States and undermining the U.S. dollar, will do in the long term. But it portends short term gains for the wealthy few (plus impending $4-trillion tax cuts) and long term pain for the majority.
So when I sat down to watch With Love, Meghan last week in the midst of all that is swirling in the country, I found a kind of peace in the world the Duchess has created—a world of found friends, close family, inspiring new connections and lots of delicious comforts from nature and thoughtful cooking. Although she is obviously upper class, the crafts and cooking she displays are attainable even with substitutions. Like Pamela Anderson who suffered through a career of artistic success and indignities as a sexualized woman in Hollywood that eventually returned to her family farm in Canada, Meghan Markle wants some semblance of peace despite her very public life. Anderson had an amazing 2023 documentary of her life that premiered on Netflix during the pandemic that finally told her story with compassion and, more importantly, in her own words.
I see Meghan Markle as a woman who is, yes, arguably living “the soft life” or at least that’s the lifestyle she projects and like Anderson she has a public side that wants or even needs to be seen and appreciated. They are both very maternal, nature-loving, sensitive, effortlessly creative souls. Also like Anderson, there is a protectiveness to Meghan that may be read as inauthenticity or aloofness that I presume comes from years of intense scrutiny and harassment.
As I noted in the piece I wrote last year on the British royals, Meghan was on the receiving end of a faucet of negative press in the British media with twice as many negative headlines as positive ones. This culminated in credible violent threats to Meghan, Harry and Archie, who was a baby when they left royal life. In 2022, former head of counter terrorism for the British Metropolitan Police, Neil Basu, told Channel 4 News about the "disgusting and very real" threats from the far-right against Prince Harry and Meghan Markle that people were prosecuted for. Prince Harry, in fact, was recently in a UK court trying to restore rights to a security detail for when his family visits the UK, lost when he left royal service. The Sussex’s would legitimately need security in the UK, especially given July 2024’s racially charged violent far-right riots mobilized by similar, if not the same, voices that drove them out of England.
Meghan Makle comes across as a very thoughtful, positive, optimistic and playful woman at her core. I think she is quite strong to have navigated the minefield that she did, to still have her young family and her sanity intact, let alone be thriving. I see people online go crazy about who Meghan is or is not and that tells me something. I understand being critical of royalty as “a thing” in general or of celebrity culture, but her indomitability and desire for a happy, unbothered life gets at people in the same way President Obama’s tan suit caused an uproar: how dare you hold the spotlight and look good doing it—so we’ll nitpick to make you feel small. As an aside, Markle debuted some items for her upscale lifestyle brand “As Ever” this month and everything sold out in 30 minutes.
I give it up to Meghan Sussex née Markle, the working class TV star from SoCal who found a love story as unique as her own personal journey. Even though moments in With Love, Meghan feel a bit self-conscious, I got into the spirit of it and learned more about the woman behind the headlines, in her own words. The Duchess was a literal girl scout for many years, as she reveals in the series. She conducts regular charity work through her Archewell Foundation with Prince Harry on social impact initiatives like mental health, education and online safety, as well as, past work with UN Women and recent advocacy during the devastating Los Angeles fires this year. I think she genuinely likes to help people and is a service-oriented person by nature and upbringing.
With Love, Meghan is just a little drop of sunshine from a mixed race black woman who has been through hell, lived to tell the tale and hopefully share some stories of her own. The larger message, however, is that the world is changing and we have a number of interesting emerging leaders with diverse expressions of service and ways of living in an ever-changing world. The Duchess of Sussex is one such person. My hope is that she understands that those of humble circumstances admire her as much as those who can easily afford her lifestyle brand. That’s where the Duchess can have the most positive influence—across seemingly disparate identities—by remaining aware of where she came from. After watching the first season of her Netflix series, I have a feeling she’s up to the task.
With Love During End Times,
Agunda