Meghan: Titan of Self-Promotion
What a case study in superficiality reveals about our culture
I don’t call Meghan Markle (which is somehow still what we call her after her wedding, as if the public understands that celebrity weddings are a different species and don’t impose the same rules of nomenclature) a titan of self-promotion because she’s incredibly good at it. Donald Trump is very good at self-promotion. LIZZO is very good at self-promotion (although she’s had a series of branding setbacks in the past few weeks; it turns out that hiring people based on their body type doesn’t address personality disorders). Dylan Mulvaney is very good at self-promotion; Meghan is not. Like Amber heard, she lacks the insight to understand how she is perceived by most people. She considers her false and cloying “Princess Diana v2.0: Girlboss” persona to be so worthy and beloved that people can’t see her artifice and ambition. Perhaps if she didn’t mix these elements with serial dishonesty and the cultivation of a certain level of interpersonal drama (from afar) she would have kept the hearts of Americans and probably many Britons but, like Daedalus, she flew too high too fast and exceeded her acting capabilities and the public tolerance for bullshit.
It’s interesting to consider the directions that her story might take henceforth. She’s a member of a wedded couple only notable for one of them (and not her) having been a member of the British Royal Family. Their refrain has been “I just want a chance to tell my side of the story so let’s finalize a $100 million deal with Netflix and publish Harry’s memoir”. The memoir which was written after a painful and confusing dislocation-by a 38-year old with no accomplishments to speak of. They just want to tell their side of things… for the fifth time. Actually they would probably like to make a career of it. It’s been the same old tune for years now and nobody cares about their dishonest recollections of Meghan’s travails during her brief tenure as royalty. As it turned out, nobody really cared even before the release of their fantastical and cynically manipulative Netflix documentary.
I hesitate to pronounce definite opinions on celebrity-related matters. I rarely venture into that part of the entertainment universe and I was initially drawn to news about Meghan because of her exquisite narcissism. Just as Trump is a kind of blackbody object for exaggeration and extemporaneous invention, Meghan has perfected the role of Wife/Mother/Angel to her personal limit. Watching her carefully managing her poor, poor husband with a painfully open and benevolent expression on her face, her form frozen in an ‘open’ posture. It’s fascinating in the way that catatonic schizophrenia is. The varieties of human experience truly are vast. If she were a better actress she might be truly dangerous.
If the situation is as it appears to me (after fairly cursory examination) right now Meghan Markle intentionally snared a prince to elevate her status and then either exaggerated or invented a sudden case of depression and suicidality. These would be addressed, at her direction, not with therapy or medication or exercise but with the withdrawal of her husband from the life and role he was born into. After that was done she (with he quietly abetting her, conflicted by love and lust and spousal loyalty and unresolved psychological issue with his dead mother) authored a narrative of racism and paparazzi harassment and sinister implication that directly discredited (or tried to…) the Palace and its attendant organizations and personalities. This narrative seems as if it has almost no basis in demonstrated fact. If the situation is as it appears right now then Meghan Markle is a malignant narcissist and Harry is doomed to a great deal of unhappiness. It does not bear to consider the lives of their children, but narcissists often cause reactions in their offspring, resulting in attachment disorders or problematic self image. The fulcrum point for me in deciding that Meghan was a bad person was when she claimed to need privacy and to have been hounded by the media (as Harry’s mother was unto her death). Meghan basked in the reasonable and polite journalistic attention she received. In fact, those are some of the few times when one senses that she’s truly happy. All the rest is more or less paying her dues to win that adoration which her vacuous self-image needs for maintenance, I imagine.
Even if my assessment of their recent family history is badly wrong in some sense though, I think it’s safe to declare that Meghan loves self-promotion. In a sense that is her self-defined mission on this Earth, although she would never admit that to anybody. How exhausting must it be to be driven towards the fickle adoration of public acclaim as if it’s a lifeblood? I doubt that Meghan is truly herself even with her husband and her children. Ironically it is duplicity which drives Meghan toward fame like a moth to a light, and it is that quality which ultimately defeats her, for people are pretty good at gauging authenticity and Meghan is critically lacking.
She has tried to position herself as many admirable things: a kind of sexy and fashionable Mother Theresa/Hillary Clinton chimera. What does her career of endless self-promotion reveal about our culture?
1.) We have a false and unhealthy relationship with mental health concepts: I’ve begun to think that maybe we should bin the entire lexicon of mental healthcare. It’s so muddled and frequently misused that it’s probably doing more harm than good. Frankly the field was never more than half pseudo-science anyway and the widespread capture of therapists for the gender ideology movement has revealed a serous flaw in the profession.
‘Trauma’, ‘processing’, ‘gaslighting’… the terms of mental health are usually used (and they’re used by Meghan and her husband) as academic-sounding validations of whatever they already want to do. Don’t want to acknowledge or forgive some messy event in the past? You’re still processing it. Had a highly unpleasant argument with someone on Twitter (X)? You’re dealing with trauma. Someone contradicting your characterization of reality or implying that you’re being disingenuous? They’re gaslighting you. They’re being emotionally abusive! They’re narcissists.
In other words, everyone goes around doing and thinking and saying whatever they would be doing and thinking and saying anyway and they slather a layer of medicalized buzzwords on top of it. Mental healthcare is about addressing symptoms and it’s about changing. It’s not easy and it’s not fun to talk about and it’s not ‘affirming’. If it usually feels good or is in deep agreement with your impulses and ideas then it’s probably not mental healthcare.
2.) Victim status is an essential currency in the modern contest for social capital: It is one of the strange and unseemly developments of this decade that victim status has become a real source of credibility and status. The perversities abound with an incentive structure like that. One of the most immediate contradictions is a small universe of women advertising their own strength and assertiveness and vision… while simultaneously huddling into a category of victims: victims of workplace discrimination or ‘unrealistic body types’ or sexist stereotypes. The men who built the American railroads had to surmount incredible obstacles to actualize their vision. Surely these women can rise through the corporate ladder (in markets and legal systems and organizations conveniently already constituted by men) if they share the drive and resilience of those men (which they would certainly claim). For all of her talk of “causes” that she’s “passionate” about her podcast is about women being categorized (or mischaracterized, or mislabeled, or something-things that no tough assertive individual operating in the market cares about whatsoever) and it’s an opportunity for Meghan to meet with other privileged women and complain about slights and inaccuracies and the many indignities of an inconsiderate world. At the risk of perpetuating sexism, I must say that normal adult men would never devote a podcast to the problem of being mislabeled. This is the kind of endeavor that certain kinds of women undertake in order to promote sex equality but by doing it they diverge sharply from the world of men, and from the world of productive reality.
Meghan is also a victim because she’s black (she’s obviously not, but whatever), and wasn’t properly looked after or “taught” during her abortive stint as a Royal. Woman, racial minority, mental health conditions: check / check / check. A naysayer might point out that she’s young and healthy and successful and attractive and this helped win the hand of one of the .01% most coveted bachelors on the planet, opening up an entire comfortable life of easy wealth and dilettantism but I would never venture that far.
One of the many carefully rehearsed expressions of Meghan (above). Like Amber Heard’s, they are ALMOST believable but, unfortunately for both women, humans are very good at reading facial cues and micro-expressions and she is no Daniel Day-Lewis. I call this face “vulnerable compassion” and imagine that Meghan uses it to try to bolster the impression that she is a selfless and authentic person. She falls into the uncanny valley though and there’s something vaguely unsettling and false about her affect.
3.) Subjectivity is paramount: …but not for any deep philosophical reasons. Subjectivity allows everyone to be right and everyone to have their own truth and everyone to be on their own journey (another mental health term which has been horribly twisted, beyond recognition). It is the surest way to validate EVERYONE’S ideas and behaviors - which actually validates no one’s. It’s a convenient posture for corporations and celebrities to take for it allows them to avoid associating with any facts or advice which might be uncomfortable for people while maintaining the fiction that this is a radical gesture of open-mindedness and relativistic tolerance. Everyone is on their own journey and everyone just needs to listen to their own hearts and give themselves permission to become everything they’re meant to be (the platitudes are endless). Unfortunately the nation of people who are undertaking all of these journeys right now is perhaps the most mentally ill and disordered society which has ever existed. What people really need is truth and encouragement and resolve, not affirmation.
4.) Image > Action: Meghan considers herself to be an activist of some kind and is often proclaiming her “work” in visiting Rwanda or supporting mental health (ironic) or building the self images of girls and young women. When she’s asked exactly what she does, though, she meanders off into a thicket of buzzwords. It seems quite likely that Meghan flies around the world, attends events, meets various personalities, and wears a particular outfit. She talks to dignitaries, using words, and smiles, while wearing expensive and tasteful fashions. This is obviously not work in the usual sense. In fact it’s an endless series of time-wasting engagements that only exist because the wealthy are often unsatisfied with just mailing checks and the non-profit sector needs something to do (obviously other than solving their problems of focus). It’s sanctimony tourism. Meghan shows no inclination to spend her own money to improve the world and she has no obvious talent or insight that would be valuable to non-profits or NGO’s. Meghan is simply using her “charity work” as another avenue for self-promotion. This is less than perfectly ethical but it could be fairly harmless. However, many of the causes that Meghan has publicly crowded around involve political debates and policy questions. Meghan Markle is the last person on Earth who should be trying to equalize gender disparities - everything she has today was gained when consummated a traditional and symbolic marriage to a high status member of an ancient royal dynasty. Meghan Markle is the last person on Earth who should be holding forth on carbon footprints - her international air travel probably approaches the annual carbon emission of Sri Lanka (flying is incredibly emissions-intensive). These are all real problems which require real understanding and real sacrifice… not a group of grown women cosplaying adult versions of a Barbie tea time. Status should only be gained through work and risk and sacrifice, not speeches and galas.
Stop looking at us!
We want our privacy!
Waaagh