Sometimes writing about the royal family can take an intrepid writer to some strange places, like spending the early morning hours googling four-star hotels in Indianapolis, US.
But then again, who would ever have thought that a one-time senior member of the royal family, King Charles III’s daughter-in-law and a bona fide Duchess to boot, was ever going to end up on the Indiana hotel ballroom stage as some mid-tier accounting manager with a bad PowerPoint?
But there on November 29, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, will be at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown where she will be hosting a ‘The Power of Women’ event for the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana. (The Water and Sewer Distributors of America will be hosting their get together the week earlier at JW Marriott in case you are wondering.)
Now, the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana has quite the pedigree with former First Lady Michelle Obama speaking at their event in 2018, however, here’s the rub.
When FLOTUS took to the stage, the Women’s Fund event was held at an indoor arena and to a sold-out audience of 13,000 people. And Meghan? The largest capacity of a conference space at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown is 2500 people.
Clearly the expectations about what sort of crowd Meghan will pull are not even vaguely in the same ballpark, or even indoor arena, as that of Michelle.
Unfortunately, as the timeworn cliche goes, numbers don’t lie and for Meghan, it’s been a pretty bumpy week on the numbers front.
First, there was this Indianapolis news, which brings with it the less-than-flattering comparisons to Michelle’s pulling power, and then secondly there is the video that was released by Variety last week in conjunction with her appearing on the front cover of the Hollywood bible.
It’s four and a half minutes of Meghan talking about making a “solid Bolognese sauce,” her love of scrabble and helping women in the industry, very similar to the one filmed for previous Variety cover star Ana de Armas.
But the numbers … oh boy.
(Look away now if you happen to be drinking your tea out of a Harry’n’Meghan official wedding china mug.)
As of the time of writing, Meghan’s video has 2600 likes and, based on numbers from the Return YouTube Dislikes extension, 18,000 thumbs down. De Armas, by contrast, has 7300 likes and 311 dislikes.
Yowser.
As of the time of writing, Meghan’s video has 2600 likes and, based on numbers from the Return YouTube Dislikes extension, 18,000 thumbs down. De Armas, by contrast, has 7300 likes and 311 dislikes. Photo / YouTube
Like an inverse Sally Field, the internet doesn’t like her; they really don’t like her.
I’m not sure where or when it happened precisely, but at some point between the gates of Frogmore Cottage and doors of the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown Ballroom, the great Megxit dream would seem to have cratered.
In those heady days in early 2020 post the great Windsor Divorce, it seemed all but dead certain that Meghan would rise from the ashes of her royal career like a Proenza Schouler-wearing phoenix and ascend to the highest heights.
She would be Mother Teresa, Diana, Princess of Wales and Beyonce rolled into one, changing lives and helming her own brand of 21st century activism.
But more than 1000 days on from Megxit, the reality of Montecito Meghan, is, dispiritingly, far from that scenario.
Unfortunately, the brand of feminism that the former Suits star has reliably wheeled out is largely performative.
Take last week when she appeared at an internal Spotify event wearing a T-shirt that read, in Farsi, “Women. Life. Freedom,” the rallying cry of the unbelievably brave women currently protesting in Iran.
(The demonstrations were sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by authorities for allegedly breaking headscarf rules. At least 222 people have been killed, according to the BBC.)
The Duchess of Sussex has shown her support for the women and girls of Iran, speaking at a @Spotify event in their support and wearing a T-shirt with the Farsi words for “Women. Life. Freedom.” https://t.co/jAteKaacI3pic.twitter.com/JvqnWEwINs
Now, let me stop here and point out that Kate, Princess of Wales and the royal family as a whole have done or said exactly nothing about what is going on Iran, to their serious discredit.
While the issue is technically political, unless Buckingham Palace is worried about upsetting some bearded mullahs whose beliefs about women belong in the seventh century, then it is reprehensible they have not spoken out.
At least Meghan has made some sort of gesture. But it’s just that – a largely empty gesture.
If she really wanted to stir things up a bit, she could rally, say, Beyonce and Kim Kardashian to follow suit too. Something along these lines would be a perfect alignment of the 41-year-old’s global celebrity and her values.
Political moment, meet Meghan.
And instead? She wore a T-shirt. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi can probably sleep easy tonight.
Again, at least she did something but she could do so much more.
The same criticism can be held to her approach to the overturning of abortion protections when the Supreme Court threw out Roe vs Wade, which saw take part in a Vogue Q + A with Gloria Steinem and then … um … never mention the fact more than 20 million women now don’t have safe access to abortion in the US.
Meghan Markle in a photo shoot for a recent interview with Variety. Photo / Variety
These are pivotal moments that could be real turning points for tens of million women; moments just begging for a person with the resources, contacts list and media nous of someone like the Duchess of Sussex to step up and to lead.
Maybe, just maybe, Meghan has been spending all this time working on some world-shaking, history making plan but so far there has been no sign of that.
If the Duchess had hoped that her Archetypes podcast series, which has seen her explore a number of gendered ‘archetypes’ (cough, they’re stereotypes) with celebrities including Serena Williams, Mariah Carey, Constance Wu, and Paris Hilton.
But if Spotify, which is paying her and husband Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, somewhere between $32 and $4.8 million for their exclusive talents, had assumed they would have a sure-fire hit on their hands, then I have some very bad news.
Overall the series might be coming in the fourth spot in the US but only the ‘bimbo’ episode from last week of all the seven Archetypes episodes released so far is even in the top 100 episode list.
Somehow, despite a 28-person podcast team, considerable resources and once having had Michelle Obama’s number (she interviewed her for her Forces of Change issue of Vogue in 2019) Meghan has largely failed to crack the feminist big time.
Not only that, she has become a deeply polarising figure, as the Variety video numbers make painfully clear, who generally now only makes news when she talks about herself, not for her humanitarian work, and who despite everything, still can’t attract anywhere near the sort of crowds as Michelle Obama.
As the former White House resident herself once said, “Success isn’t about how much money you make; it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.”
