What have you heard so far about Meghan Markle? Is she just Prince Harry’s new fiancee, or is she your new style icon? Were you a fan of hers after watching Suits, or are you just interested in the gown she’ll be wearing during the royal wedding?
An extreme amount of buzz always follows a royal engagement, so it’s easy to get confused in the flood of ensuing articles. Take this one, for example, where Cosmopolitan compares Markle’s style to Kate Middleton by placing side-by-side pictures of them wearing similarly-colored dresses. While wearing a color available to all humans isn’t usually enough to warrant an article comparing two people, when it comes to royal w
eddings, there’s a royal amount of fluff.
There is a person behind the fluff, though. Venture farther than what was recently published and you’ll actually find Markle’s own writing, where her personality and passions are much more easily viewable.
In December of last year, for example, Markle wrote a piece for ELLE detailing the experiences she’s had growing up in a biracial family.
To Markle, the question “What are you?” hasn’t always been so easy. When asked it, she writes she often begins a “verbal dance.”
“Well … I’m an actress, a writer, the Editor-in-Chief of my lifestyle brand The Tig, a pretty good cook and a firm believer in hand-written notes.”When asked again, “Right, but what are you? Where are you parents from?,” she yields.
“My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African American. I’m half black and half white.”
Markle admits that talking about race isn’t her favorite subject. “When I was asked by ELLE to share my story, I’ll be honest, I was scared. It’s easy to talk about which make-up I prefer, my favourite scene I’ve filmed, the rigmarole of ‘a day in the life’ … today I am choosing to be braver, to go a bit deeper, and to share a much larger picture ….”
There have been other difficulties she’s shared about, too, like finding a way to return to the glitz and glam of Hollywood after spending time abroad doing humanitarian work in Rwanda as an advocate for UN Women.
“Driving back on the dusty roads that day,” she writes again for ELLE, “I received an email from my managers asking whether I’d attend the Baftas. I had never been and had always romanticised it. A high-end jewellery company was going to fly me in, dress me in the fanciest of gowns, and I would travel straight from Kigali to Heathrow, London, to the makeup chair and onto the red carpet.”
“My brain, heart and spirit couldn’t shift gears that quickly, from the purpose-driven work I had been doing all week in Rwanda to the polished glamour of an awards show. ‘No,’ my heart said. And it wasn’t a soft whisper; it was a lion’s roar.”
We aren’t sure if Meghan is an authority on lion roars, but we’re just going to say it was a lioness and applaud her for her continued unabashed feminism.
Featured Image by Genevieve on Flickr
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