As Ever #3 As If

[PrettyFlyforaMaiTai]

Another thread to discuss the rebranding of ARO and the merchandising of With Love, Meghan

Part 2: www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/5278062-as-ever-2-whatever

That’s what I see too.

Ah thanks. I don’t understand that stuff.

Not every child of parents who have the recessive red gene will have red hair. Families can have a variety of different hair colours even with red on both sides - my own DCs certainly do.

On the whole, darker hair and eyes are more likely to be passed on. Clearly, Meghan owes a lot of her appearance to her mother, so H's assumption was possibly based on observation.

I am a redhead and so is DH's sister so we thought there was a possibility DD would be a redhead. She is mouse brown. Neither of DH's sister's boys is a red-head but there's one red grandchild. As you say, it's hard to call. My DD claims not to like red hair but I have warned her it may re-emerge with her children, especially as the probable father has Scandinavian ancestry. My point about Harry is the unlikelihood of both children being redheads when only one parent is redheaded.

Well that's the other thing. If you are in love with the person you are having children with, and find them very attractive, then wouldn't you want your children to look like the person you love too? I would have loved my kids to have taken after their lovely father in looks (he's a green eyed redhead), but my genes beat the crap out of his. DH on the other hand absolutely loves that they look like me. I have to content myself with the fact that they got many of his lovely personality traits and mannerisms. Both of us were very curious about what our (mixed race) children would look like when they were born, we talked about it, but neither of us worried about it or dwelled on it in the way Harry describes he did. And neither of us hoped our kids would take after our own parents - that's just weird!

I’ve never understood this thing about redheads being teased. I absolutely LOVE red hair. I would have given anything to have had long thick auburn hair.

Neither I nor my exH are redheads but some of our DCs are. The red on my side lurked unseen for two generations.

Weirdly, I see Johnny Spencer there.

@FromThePrismOfJammyTodger exactly. That's what I find weird about these,

There is even a 'Kick a ginger' day. I laughed when DD came home from school and told me they hasd all been called into the hall because teachers had got wind of plans by some pupils to seek out gingers and kick them.

When all children in school were white, red hair stood out as a point of difference, hence tge teasing I suppose.

Oh dear Pamela's Cooking with Love is airing soon. None of these are things I would really watch. There's so much of this 🤷‍♀️

The lifestyle is very MC American. It's all chickens, vegetable gardens, comfortable cream-beige interiors, dogs, dining outside, nobody worried about the mess the children make when they 'help' prepare a meal, and the vibe of the instagram posts matches all of that perfectly. Her platform has always been (loosely) support of women's empowerment.

I saw the thread on X with the photos, that @Mylovelygreendress posted, and followed some of the replies to that. I ended up looking at this one:

https://x.com/Crochetteawig/status/1840425661699129838

who found an archive of Northwestern's graduates. Meghan graduated from the School of Communications, which doesn't allow double majors. So where did she get her degree in international relations from?

Katherine now wears all the jewellery from the Elvis outfit. H has probably already done a lot of double takes at the dozens of sartorial references to Diana she has chosen for many years too.

@mathanxiety but there is no empowerment for women in that life 🤷‍♀️ . It's for the already well off.

@IdaGlossop
Beatrice, Eugenie, James, and Louise are all a different generation from the children of H&M. There are very few authorised photos of B or E's children's faces.

And actually, James and Louise went very much under the radar, James especially, in accord with the wishes of their parents. I remember reading somewhere that Louise was gobsmacked to learn from schoolmates that her grandmother was the Queen.

The Yorks attracted a lot of flak for allegedly pushing their daughters into the limelight and assuming that they would always fully enjoy the privileges that come with the titles their parents chose to have bestowed on them.

Meghan

There is a big appeal to black American women, which seems to go unnoticed in the UK.

Modeling a middle class lifestyle and 'giving back' to the community are very much a part of the culture of black middle class Americans, for whom visibly living the lifestyle of the comfortably off middle class is in itself a political statement. (This includes wearing the t-shirt of your extremely selective alma mater, that you had the self-confidence to apply to). It's also a case of the personal being political when the biracial angle enters the conversation.

There is nothing empowering about poverty, especially in the black American context. Showcasing a comfortable middle-class life is coded very differently in the US and the UK. The cost of living crisis doesn't come into it.

Going back to the "Princess Meghan Markle" IP and the (batshit) assumptions about that...Having middle-class values, living a middle-class lifestyle, being educated, well-off, and committed to philanthropy and civic responsibility, especially wrt the black community, are part of the culture of the formerly reviled "black American princess" trope. It used to be pilloried (along with 'Jewish American Princess' and 'Italian American Princess') as an entitled, rather spoiled type, but it has been reclaimed as a badge of pride.

In short - it's a mistake to see and judge MM through British eyes and with a British frame of reference. I don't think she's trying to communicate with the British.

You can't do a double major within the School of Communications, i.e. you can't choose two majors within that School. You can do one major in Communication and another in another School.

Her second major was International Studies, not International Relations

You can pick up enough credits via electives or required courses to qualify for a double major in International Studies at Northwestern. Courses across a wide number of schools and departments can be counted for the major.
internationalstudies.northwestern.edu/undergraduate/course-information/

In an American university, your academic advisor will periodically sit you down and do a degree audit, and can sometimes alert you to the possibility of achieving a major with a minor or a double major as you choose courses ahead of each semester. By judicious choosing of electives and required courses you can end up declaring a minor or a double major, even if you hadn't considered the possibility when you first registered. This is how one of my DDs ended up with a double major (it involved doing the maximum number of credits allowed in her last three semesters).

I just reread The Cut piece again. Alison P. Davis is the most brilliant writer.

As an aside, does anyone know what the murderers row reference means here?

She has lined up a murderers’ row of guests: Constance Wu, Issa Rae, Lisa Ling, Margaret Cho, and Ziwe. (I’ll let you guess who aligns with which archetype.)

Louise gobsmacked that granny was Queen? Come on now math don't believe everything you read!

I too think the Markle ankle biters resemble the grandfather Markle side. Most unfortunate. Especially from a merching point of view. It's a terribly unfortunate shot of the boy in particular. ( mind you I think most babies tend to resemble baking potatoes!)

I adore red hair. I dislike the idea of gene 'lurking unseen' as math puts it. We wouldn't talk of African American genes lurking unseen now, would we?

Is this article saying that WME aren’t repping Meghan’s new TV show but may continue to work on previously agreed projects? News dot com in Australia is only two steps above your Daily Mail to be fair…
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/meghan-markle-reportedly-dropped-by-hollywood-agent/news-story/459aeb47f881e754b0f6134b0175701f

That’s interesting. Another reason why she couldn’t ‘get’ British values.

Wow!

Page six too!

https://pagesix.com/2025/02/24/royal-family/hollywood-buzzing-that-wme-dropped-meghan-markle/

It think the overall point that is being missed here by some is that this influencer lifestyle is not what they told the British Public they wanted when they stepped back from royal duties. They had an enormous sum of money out of both the RF and the British public purse and then fucked off with the excuse that they wanted a hybrid lifestyle of service and peace and quiet and that they hate the press and the public eye.

At the time many people were suspicious that all this meant was that the couple wanted to have their cake and eat it too: public money to support very little work on behalf of the country AND merchandising their royal connections for a private income.

The Queen very rightly told them no. Service (as many influencers fail to understand) is doing something without flogging it for personal gain. The crown serves the country as head of state. How would it work to have a representative of the crown getting caught up in dodgey business dealings (she’s already had that issue with Andrew and wasn’t going to risk it again).

Whether or not that initial statement from the Sussexes was a deliberate lie or just and attempt to win over the public to their plan, we’ll never know.

But Sussex fans are absolutely deluded to assign racism and ignorance to the British people as their only motivator to dislike Meghan and Harry. People don’t like feeling duped. And people also don’t like liars. so much of what they’ve said about their freedom turns out to be bullshit that (like the boy who cried Wolf) people now suspect everything they say.

And as much as people might have been a bit ‘meh’ about the Queen. They also were extremely taken aback by the toddler tantrum interview with Oprah. Meghan and Harry are like tragic heroes: their fatal flaws have brought about their own downfall.

There may be cultural differences at play here. But the biggest one is that US commentators seem to believe the U.K. public is being unreasonable in not instantly forgiving Meghan because she is an American who does American things in an American way (obviously superior) and Brits are just too uptight. The cultural imperialism of the US in play.