From the moment that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle became engaged, people framed her as “lucky.”
But for Meghan, people treating her like she “won” I Wanna Marry Harry has had a pretty nasty vibe.
Despite the serious issues within the royal family, Meghan loves her husband.
What she doesn’t love is the way that people act like he “chose” her from a selection. This was not a one-way relationship.
Duchess Meghan Markle’s Archetypes podcast continues to be a smash hit.
On the third episode, she spoke to guest Mindy Kaling about her famous relationship.
In November of 2017, Meghan and Harry’s engagement news became public. And at the time, people had a lot to say.
Meghan explained that it was not just what the public thought. People said things to her face.
“When I started dating my husband, we became engaged,” she recalled.
“And,” Meghan continued, “everyone was just like, ‘Oh my god, you’re so lucky! He chose you!’”
“And at a certain point, after you hear it a million times over,” the Duchess of Sussex went on.
She expressed: “you’re like, ‘Well, I chose him, too.’”
Right. That is how most relationships work. A man making a one-sided selection from an array of women is something very different. Or, you know, The Bachelor.
Meghan pointed out how “gendered” those kinds of comments are, even without the royal element.
She noted how it “feeds into this idea that you’re waiting for someone to tell you that you’re good enough.”
The Duchess continued “as opposed to knowing that you’re good enough on your own.”
Fortunately, Meghan did not have to deal with this very skewed characterization alone.
“I have a partner who was countering that narrative for me,” she affirmed.
She recalled Harry taking a stand “and going, ‘They’ve got it all wrong. I’m the lucky one, ’cause you chose me.’”
Much of our culture does perpetuate a notion like this.
The messaging that girls receive from extremely young ages is that they are waiting for a man to choose them.
Their job in the mean time is to make themselves worthy so that they will be chosen. It sounds like a dystopian novel … or Cinderella.
Obviously, Harry’s status as a member of the British royal family only reinforced this messaging.
Once again, we get the Cinderella vibes. Or a more consensual version of The Princess Bride, minus the oversized rodents.
That Harry was famously one of the most desired men on the planet only furthered the one-sided view that many people took.
Harry is an obviously good-looking guy.
But for Millennial women around the world who were close enough in age to him and William, some would indulge in fantasies of becoming a “princess” by marriage.
And when they compared Harry to William, well, Harry seemed more eligible.
(No offense?)
Harry’s desirability status was so great that I Wanna Marry Harry was a very real, yet extremely fake, reality series.
Remember, this was a show that made contestants compete to marry Prince Harry … by hiring a vague lookalike.
The show was not all fun and games, either. Because the contestants weren’t merely expected to pretend that he was Harry.
The show gaslit some contestants, and we don’t mean lying. We mean actual gaslighting, convincing contestants that they were
Doubters sat down with a fake therapist, to convince them that doubting “Harry’s” authenticity was unhealthy.
We know that this was a bit of a tangent, but it’s good to remember why people were so weird about him dating Meghan.
Well, that and the fact that she’s a Black American woman.
Just like when people whine about Black elves in Rings of Power, people will insist that they’re not racist, but. Sure.
