Can we all stop attacking the Duchess of Sussex now?
Criticism of her has reached depressing new highs, but why?
BY ELLA ALEXANDER
JUL 12, 2019
A public and media backlash against the Duchess of Sussex was depressingly inevitable. After the hype of the royal wedding and obsequious fawning over the then-Meghan Markle, people have become bored of the same narrative and have turned against the woman who only 12 months ago was seen as a progressive, radical, history-making addition to the royal family.
“It’s worth standing back and restating – the British family will now have, at its heart, at its future, a British woman who isn’t white,” the BBC’s former royals correspondent Peter Hunt told us prior to the royal wedding. “That imagery and what it says to people in the UK is a powerful, potent and positive development.”
Fast-forward a year and the public and media perception is predictably different – the path of a woman who is put on a pedestal to be then torn down is well-trodden. Michelle Obama, Anne Hathaway and Keira Knightley are all good examples of this. What is more surprising is the level of vitriol that this criticism has now reached – a screeching, acidic and nasty collective trolling that spans both the press and public. Although some of these voices come from white, middle-class men, others are also, perhaps more grimly, from women.
Before anyone denounces this rising bad feeling towards the Duchess, let’s look at the facts. The shift began in earnest after Meghan fell pregnant, which is interesting given how many loaded comments were made about her age and ability to have children. Anyway, so Meghan proves herself fertile and bears a child as the right-wing press wanted, but her way of being pregnant somehow started to annoy everyone. A lot was made about how she held her baby bump – “What a narcissist. We get it. You’re pregnant. [...] Meghan Markle is a complete diva,” sniped one Twitter user. “Why can’t she just stand normal [sic],” said another angry tweeter. “She is just constantly showing off and this is really disgusting and repelling.”
At worst Meghan’s cradling of her stomach could be seen as smug to those struggling to have children, but “disgusting and repelling”? Really? In March, Kensington Palace made a stand against toxic comments that were left under its social-media posts, exercising its right to delete anything that was considered “obscene, offensive, threatening, abusive, hateful and inflammatory”. You can imagine that this job alone must require a full-time member of staff to manage. Tensions rose again after the couple bucked another royal tradition and decided not to pose for pictures outside the hospital following the birth of their son, Archie. Then, last week, the Palace released another statement stipulating that his christening would be kept private with only official photos to be released. This irked the press once again. “They can't have it both ways,” the royal biographer Penny Junor told The Sunday Times. “Either they are totally private, pay for their own house and disappear out of view, or play the game the way it is played.”
Of course, there are the ongoing rumours of a feud between Kate and Meghan because we all know that we women can’t help but compare ourselves to one another and fill our time tearing each other’s hair out. Thank God we mercifully have the clever, grown-up men to remedy us of our juvenile ways. It is also interesting that it is only ever Kate and Meghan who are allegedly at each other’s throats, not William and Harry.
There were a few other points that attracted headlines – namely Meghan’s decision to alter her engagement ring, featuring diamonds from jewellery previously belonging to Diana, Princess of Wales – and then, this week, her bodyguard’s request to a journalist not to take her picture while she watched her friend Serena Williams play at Wimbledon. Her security said the royal attended the match in a “private capacity”, prompting a random TV presenter to brand her behaviour “a joke”. "She wants to have her cake and eat it and it's driving people nuts,” he moaned, referring to the age-old criticism thrown at the royal family when they want an iota of privacy – the taxpayer funds their existence and therefore they are not entitled to the same basic rights as anyone else.
All this was nothing in comparison to the bile thrown at her this week (10 July), when she brought her newborn son to watch Prince Harry compete in a polo match. The biggest issue, other than her allegedly unacceptable appearance, was that she wasn’t holding her son correctly. “What kind of mother holds her baby like that?” said one social-media user, while another wrote on Instagram, “The Z-class actress looks messy, like she escaped from an asylum and stole a child from a park.” You don’t have to be a parent to know that this abusive, hateful language is utterly unjustified. Even more depressing is that this vitriolic comment was liked by 21 equally misguided Instagram users. The aforementioned random TV presenter responded by inexplicably sharing a guide to becoming "a popular princess".
The press’ new attitude towards Meghan can be attributed to the couple’s decision to reduce their access, which is thought to be rooted in the death of Harry’s mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, who was killed in a road accident. The paparazzi had been chasing her car at the time of her death, and Meghan is thought to have compounded Harry’s coldness to photographers. The problem with shattering this tradition – the nuanced push and pull of royal coverage, which the firm needs to sustain itself and remain relevant – is that the press responds with ill-will and mockery, running stories on the royal family’s alleged extravagance, low intelligence, laziness or diva-like behaviour. The New York Times compared the media response to “the scorned fairy not invited to the princess’s christening in Sleeping Beauty”. A Times journalist said in February that Meghan has no reason to complain. “No one is spying on her in the gym,” he ranted. “No one is listening in on her phone calls.” That’s a low bar indeed.
If the press’ treatment of the Duchess can be explained, although not justified, it is worth considering the roots of the public’s newfound dislike for her. What prompts someone to publicly question under a picture of a new mother with her child whether “her plan is to look like she’s about to drop her baby” or to say she’s dressed so “sloppily” that she could be mistaken for her “sister-in-law’s nanny”? What does it say about ourselves that we pillory a new mother, royal or otherwise? Perhaps it’s an opportunity to project our own insecurities onto someone else. Part of our consumer culture is based on insecurity – we are fascinated by people that we think are more beautiful, more successful and happier than ourselves – and Meghan and her progressive way of being a woman in the royal family are good outlets for moments of self-doubt and inadequacies.
Last year, the public deluded themselves into thinking they wanted a modern princess, someone who they felt represented them, but what this vilification shows us is the opposite – perhaps we’re not ready for it. Perhaps what the people really want is a servile woman who keeps her head down and smiles when is appropriate – although not too much, lest she look like she’s courting attention. The bile and criticism faced by the Duchess of Sussex goes far beyond what her personality is like or how well she’s behaving.
Of all the unpleasant, racist and sexist high-profile figures currently living in our country, we naturally seem to have reserved our highest anger and upset for a young woman adjusting to motherhood. We seem to have lost all proportion and perspective in favour of old traditions about how a royal woman should behave. How classically, depressingly British.
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Para mi, este artículo pierde toda credibilidad sólo con esta frase:
Cito textual: "Of course, there are the ongoing rumours of a feud between Kate and Meghan because we all know that we women can’t help but compare ourselves to one another and fill our time tearing each other’s hair out. Thank God we mercifully have the clever, grown-up men to remedy us of our juvenile ways. It is also interesting that it is only ever Kate and Meghan who are allegedly at each other’s throats, not William and Harry."
