The Duchess of Duplicity: Meghan Markle’s Latest Hustle
The Cut, a popular New York Magazine site covering women’s lives and interests, from politics to feminism to mental health, recently posed a question: Why do some women inspire such disproportionate rage? Among the names floated, none loomed larger than Meghan Markle. The article scratched at the surface, but it stopped short of really answering the question.
That’s why I’m here.
The truth is, Meghan doesn’t just inspire rage. She inspires a kind of weary, almost anthropological fascination. One wonders how many times a woman can reinvent herself before the performance collapses under its own weight.
The comedian Tim Dillon recently sat down with Megyn Kelly. When asked about Meghan Markel, Dillon didn’t hold back, comparing her to a con artist. It might seem harsh. But it’s hard to summon much sympathy when you look at the trajectory.
It’s not that long ago that Markle was seen as a breath of fresh air in the British royal family, a chance to modernize an aging institution. Then it got messy — the claims of racism — the dramatic departure to America — a global sympathy tour led by a couple who demanded privacy while signing multimillion-dollar deals with Spotify, Netflix, and Penguin Random House.
The results spoke for themselves.
The Spotify podcast Archetypes was a dud; it was canceled after one awkward, underwhelming season. The Netflix documentary was heavy on staged walks through chicken coops and light on any real self-awareness. When one lane dried up, Meghan simply pivoted. Charity work, gardening, baking. Now, she sells small-batch honey and luxury jams at the cost of a working man’s lunch.
When she’s not in the kitchen, building her honey and jam empire, she’s busy recording episodes for her latest podcast (yes, another one). This time, however, it’s focused squarely on female entrepreneurs. Meghan, rather hilariously, casts herself as a “founder,” as if launching a struggling podcast and a line of novelty condiments from the rarefied heights of royalty qualifies one for the same title as the women who built billion-dollar companies from scratch.
It’s classic Markle. In a world obsessed with “girlboss” narratives, she’s found a way to insert herself into the entrepreneurial narrative without having built anything that remotely resembles a successful enterprise. The public is supposed to forget the last attempt. And the one before that. And the one before that. We are supposed to ignore the evident, unmissable pattern. But people aren’t stupid. Not that stupid, anyway.
Meghan so desperately wants to be the next Oprah. When is someone going to give her the bad news? (Harry, I’m looking at you.)
The problem with Ms. Markle is not necessarily her ambition. America has always been a land where hucksters and hustlers could thrive. PT Barnum didn’t hide who he was. Quite the opposite, in fact. He turned the grift into a strange sort of art. He gave the public oddities and value for their money. On the other hand, Meghan offers vague affirmations, endless complaints, and a product line that could have been dreamed up in an SNL sketch.
Somewhere along the way, Meghan devolved into a kind of self-parody, like something straight out of South Park. She is no longer a real figure you can root for, or against, or even pity.
She’s a brand, a curated carousel of grievances, empowerment slogans, wellness trends, and soft-focus Instagram aesthetics. She is what happens when a person becomes trapped inside their own marketing campaign.
The deeper issue. and why the public’s patience keeps thinning. is the sheer transparency of it all. The reinventions aren’t organic, and they aren’t believable. They are crafted, strategized, and launched with press releases and carefully coordinated leaks.
Every move screams calculation, not conviction. There’s also the inconvenient fact that, by all credible accounts, Meghan’s carefully curated public image of the smiling humanitarian, the tireless advocate, masks a very different reality behind closed doors. Numerous members of her staff have quit, citing her “condescending” behavior as the main reason.
It’s hard to sell yourself as the face of empowerment when even your own employees are reportedly scrambling for the exits. The gap between the Meghan Markle brand and the Meghan Markle reality is impossible to ignore.
Although Americans have an appetite for spectacle, they also have a nose for sincerity. They can spot a snake oil merchant a mile away. And they tend to forgive almost anything—crassness, ambition, reinvention—except fakeness. The British saw it first, perhaps because the British have a more cynical nose for class performance. The Americans, initially eager to welcome a runaway duchess back to her native land, are catching up fast. Eventually, as Meghan is coming to realize, you have to offer people something real. A real product. A real insight. A real vulnerability. A real failure you own, instead of endlessly painting yourself as a victim.
Meghan’s great tragedy is that she had a rare platform and level of goodwill and torched it all. Every new project, from the jams to the podcasts to the endless self-reinventions, doesn’t expand her brand. It chips away at it. At this point, watching Meghan Markle relaunch her public persona is like watching a magician keep pulling the same tired rabbit out of the same battered hat. At first, you clap. Then you nod politely. Then you start to feel a little embarrassed for everyone involved. In the end, it isn’t rage that Meghan Markle inspires. It’s something worse: exhaustion. And not even the finest organic honey in the world can sweeten that bitter truth.
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