Monday 08-03-2021 - 18:17

SU President, Seun Twins, shares her thoughts this International Women's Day.

This International Women’s Day, it is impossible to escape the media fixation on Meghan Markle. 

Both online and in the media, we regularly read baseless conversations about the state of a woman's femininity, and this is perfectly exemplified by the media circus around Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Oprah interview.

Now, for those of you who were able to escape the tedious and relentlessly ridiculous conversations this week concerning Meghan Markle and the royal family, I hope this piece gives you the courage to recognise this particular brand of outrage economics that does not even pretend to hide its misogynoir.

In short, can we all just leave Meghan Markle alone already? What is this fetish, not only to destroy the mental wellbeing of a young family, but to delight in the experience too? When people post on social media, when they debate a woman’s experiences with friends, they are feeding off the trauma of others. Why do so many people think it’s okay to gorge on this woman's mental health like it's a breakfast buffet? 

Honestly, ask yourself why we are so obsessed with breaking this woman, literally watching her crumble before our very eyes because she does not perform the standards of white British, upper class femininity? Why are some people so riled up, as if she alone is destroying the sanctity of the royal reputation? 

Society is obsessed with this woman for not being woman enough and in some cases being too much of a woman.

My mother always says “the devil makes play things for idle hands”, essentially meaning that people do the darnedest things when boredom strikes and it might seem that this parable is playing out right in front of us. It is easy to cast the vitriol directed at Meghan as the boredom of the pandemic getting to us. We could easily dismiss it as the outrage economy filling the void usually occupied by beer gardens and nightclubs. But it would be disingenuous to use this parable as a cop out. We cannot dismiss the obsession with Meghan Markle as surface level boredom, when beneath lies a bedrock of misogyny. Meghan Markle is the victim of insidiously intersectional abuse because her gender, race, class and sheer tenacity is fracturing our gaze.

Meghan, I stand with you, but I also just hope you get to live your life, be in love and raise your children in peace. We are witnessing the world destroy this woman's life in slow motion and enjoying it. And yet, though Meghan is the one in the limelight, her treatment is one of the most mundane activities of the patriarchy. Women across the world, every day, at our University and beyond, are experiencing the misogyny and racism of the systems we exist within, but unfortunately Oprah cannot interview every woman on primetime television so she can tell her story. 

Happy International Women’s Day.