SECOND THOUGHTS
Yes, we all love a happy ending, but...
…IT DOESN’T MEAN WE LIVE IN A POST-RACIAL WORLD. In popular culture, there aren’t a lot of things little black girls are conditioned to believe we can be when we grow up, let alone a princess. (A black Disney princess didn’t even exist until 2009.) And, historically, women of colour are rarely depicted as desirable at all. So Meghan Markle marrying into the royal family does feel like a nice, albeit small, step for representation.
But Markle, who has the privilege of a lighter complexion, doesn’t look like me. She doesn’t have my wide nose and kinky hair or any of the superficial characteristics that have been used to denigrate black women for centuries. She doesn’t have a skin tone that would prompt a playground of kids to compare her to dirt on the ground or the dog feces on their shoes—real insults I heard in my childhood.
It’s true that Markle’s skin colour hasn’t entirely protected her from facing a racist backlash since her engagement was announced. She has still had to deal with anonymous hate mail and ignorant articles by the British press. Then there was the time the wife of a cousin of the Queen wore an offensive blackamoor brooch (criticized for exoticizing images of slavery) to a royal lunch at which Markle was present. All these experiences remind her that while she may have “good hair” and Caucasian features (her dad is Dutch-Irish), she’s still black.
Markle’s blackness shouldn’t be up for debate, but it is important to remember, when she’s riding through the streets of Windsor in that fancy horse-drawn carriage, that her blackness is the palatable kind. She’s just black enough that it feels like a victory for us bullied little girls but also white enough that it feels bittersweet to me. Would Prince Harry have fallen for Markle if she looked like Lupita Nyong’o or Uzo Aduba? Would she still be getting a Disney ending if her hair weren’t blowdried straight and her skin lightly freckled and only slightly caramel? How often are we told that dark-skinned black women are just as worthy of magical happily-everafters? I’m sure Markle is going to look beautiful on her wedding day, but to me she’s another glaring reminder that this fairy tale, like the ones I grew up with, is still conditional on a certain type of beauty. KATHLEEN NEWMAN-BREMANG ...IT’S A MAJOR SACRIFICE. There are a lot of reasons I envy Meghan Markle. Becoming a member of the royal family isn’t one of them. When she says “I do” to Harry while two billion of us ogle, she’ll be waving goodbye to Meghan Markle the actress, the published writer, the lifestyle blogger, the divorcee, the beautifully flawed human that she is.
She’s joining a family that demands—at least in the public eye, given that the Queen and co. are expected to take part in hundreds of social engagements a year— Stepford-like perfection from its members, especially the women. (That pressure is, in part, why William took so long to propose to Kate, you’ll recall. “I wanted to give her a chance to see in and to back out of it if she needed to before it all got too much,” he said during their 2010 engagement interview.)
Every shoe, every coat, every forehead wrinkle, every pregnancy cankle (because you can bet there will be babies ASAP) will be headline fodder. And, yes, you could argue that such scrutiny is a failing of our image-obsessed society and that Markle has already had a taste of this, coming from the vain underworld that is Hollywood, but this is a whole new level of exposure. And she has signed up for it without expressing even the tiniest regret about letting go of a career that I imagine she spent her whole life building. “Once we hit the 100-episode marker [on Suits], I thought: ‘You know what? I have ticked this box,’ and I feel very proud of the work I have done there.’ And now it’s time to work as a team with you,’” she said to her betrothed in their first interview as a couple.
It’s true that Markle, a feminist and women’s advocate, will have a far bigger platform now, allowing her to scale her work with UN Women, World Vision et al. globally. And that’s a good thing. But I can’t help but wonder if sometimes she’ll miss just being herself. CARLI WHITWELL