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

Jamie Oliver is also British, let's face it, and therefore his cheeky schtick goes down well in Britain.

He's also been a cheeky Essex boy since, well, he was a cheeky Essex boy! The Naked Chef came out in 1999, when he was 24.

Pamela has reestablished herself as a very authentic character now living a natural life style, who has been open about her flaws and her past. People feel warm towards Pamela and like her.

Plus, Pamela has been a vegan and an animal rights advocate for decades. Her recent ditching of make-up and going completely natural-faced has also been widely praised. When you consider that the Kardashians, who wear trowel-loads of make-up, are the beauty standard nowadays it is a bold stance to take, particularly for a woman in her 50s.

I think Harry would be quite happy living quietly but Meghan has worked her whole life to be famous so will never retreat and live quietly .

I think Meghan has wanted to be rich and famous her whole life, but she's still not the kind of rich she wants to be. I think she wants to be Oprah rich, Kardashian rich, not the kind of rich where if you live an expensive life, like she and Harry do, the money starts to run out. Because if she was happy with their current level of wealth (which no one knows, but it's estimated to be approx £46 million), would she be doing a lifestyle show and flogging jam? I think not.

I think Harry did try to reconcile - he flew over when Charles’s cancer was announced and offered to help out when Catherine fell ill.

BUT once bitten twice shy. Were his motives genuine? Was he trying to get back in with his father in case the worst happened? Did he want to “help out” with fancy occasions (with Meghan) rather than the usual mundane outings?

Maybe his intentions were good. But no one can trust this pair now. I’m sure Charles loves his son, but he is the King and thus his hands surely must be tied regarding the prodigal son.

What irks me about this whole "you haven't seen the true Meghan schtick" is that it's designed to blame us, the public, for forming the wrong conclusions about her. But those conclusions are based purely on what she and her PR people have put out about her. And she's had ample opportunity for 5 years to show her true self. She's done Oprah, Netflix, Archetypes, and had an ongoing contract with Netflix , Spotify/Lemonada and Penguin Random House to show us her true self. But thus far she hasn't? Why? Why is it our fault and not hers that the wrong impression about her has been formulated?

Who knows .

Great post. There’s a drive & insecurity in M where she wants to ‘win’ in wealth & status stakes (IMO), to be ‘the richest in the village’, the best revenge to live well & all that sort of thing.

How can she achieve this though? Is this drive greater than her love for Harry (?) as the only way to reach billionaire status & all the adoration she may believe this brings is it marry one I fear. How to do that? I can see a manifestation board coming on ;) She does have huge self belief & power with men I think, if so anything is possible? ‘She-Ra’ perhaps (?) it might be fun & imagine what you could do.

Spot on! I can’t even think of any public figure ever who has had to repeatedly either say, this is the real me (eg her podcast) or you haven’t seen the real me yet.

The spiteful, vengeful bi atch on Oprah was the real her.

Jamie Oliver and the trailer of Pamela does show is Meghan is missing the connection with family and even normalish longtime friends. Abigail and mindy are doing some heavy lifting for Meghan. I'm not sure many middle class Americans see food and entertaining that does not include family. The show has reluctant Harry, the back of the heads of two children, maybe Doria and a niece who may appear but didn't make the cut for the wedding. It's the mixing of guests chefs, famous friends but it's including a glimpse of normal life with the family and extended family that creates a lifestyle. It's why they can't move on from Oprah and spare as everything they do is a reminder of what they did.

They probably wouldn’t have fallen out so badly in the first place if their mother was still alive so it probably wouldn’t even be an issue for Diana to think about.

This. It's the victim narrative. Poor Meghan, no voice! Utter nonsense.

Also, to be fair, if you're in a room with Harry, you'd be reluctant to say anything because it would end up misconstrued and used against you. For money 💰.

I think there was some PR recently about how Meghan was "sure people were going to love her" once they'd seen her latest series.

But her latest series is by her, about her, and is highly edited/curated/whatever. That's not really the type of opportunity to make people fall in love with you. You need to be interviewed, seen off the cuff, in person.

It's basic human psychology to get a "sniff" or a vibe check. You get viewers to your show about you because they already love you, they don't come to your show to make up their minds.

(I forgive a lot from people under strain, so I can see that they blundered a lot in the early days when they were leaving. But they've had five years, they're not moving house or with a young baby any more.)

Poor Lili was only 3 or 4 months old when this grandiose and delusional nonsense was spouted.

Maybe she needs to take a look a Catherines EY project to see what current research reveals about parenting and child development.

At this point in time I don’t even think Meghan knows who she is. She wants to be everything to everyone and has too many fingers in too many pies.

She flits around from idea to idea, persona to persona, but then flakes out when she’s not getting the desired outcome she hopes for. This is why she comes across as so inauthentic and fake. She doesn’t know who she really is, or she knows that her true self won’t be well received, so she’s playing dress up until she finds the right image for her brand.

I think we’ve seen glimpses of Meghan’s true character, like in the Oprah interview and in The Cut. The bullying allegations keep coming out, people keep stating that she is awful to work for and she has outbursts. She just doesn’t seem like a nice person. I hope her and Harry really do stay together long time because I get the feeling she will go nuclear if he ever wants out.

They are part of a family that will have other expectations.
So the Royal family doesn't want children to experience joy? News to Kate and William I'm sure.

But does Meghan have chemically straightened hair? Or is her straight hair her own?

I ask because 2 of my grand daughters who are sisters have completely different hair. One has tight cork screwed curls way down her back courtesy of her African genes and the other has dead straight waist length hair courtesy of her Scottish and Arab genes. Their brother has hair that’s a mix of his sisters. Oh, and one of these granddaughters even has hints of red in her black hair courtesy of my Scottishness/Irishness

Then there are another two of my grandchildren, one very much looks Arab despite his Romanian mum and Scottish nana, then there’s his sister who’s a carbon copy of me with my blondness. She looks like a Viking, even height and build wise. You wouldn’t know which one of my children she belonged to but you’d certainly know I was her Nana.

I laugh when I’m out with all 8 of my grandchildren and I can see the look of absolute confusion on the faces of people around us. And it’s even funnier when all of my children are with us as well.

The spiteful, vengeful bi atch on Oprah was the real her.

I think that was the contained and contrived persona licking her wounds and smearing others on a global platform. Many could see through it.

The real MM is the everyday person who in numerous settings over many years behaves in an appalling bullying way to dozens of people belitting, bullying, hounding them out of their jobs and reducing them to emotional wrecks needing therapy to restore the damage she has done to their MH. She is a very abusive person.

I am sad to see yet more testimonies of her disgraceful treatment of other human beings. I really hope there is a Sherbourne type person in the background encouraging each of these individuals to seek retribution via a class action law suit for workplace bullying.

If their kids become any of these things (we can’t rule it out), then I feel it will have been despite their influence.

@Weepixie All her childhood photos show MM with Afro/tightly curled hair.

If true would she really have held down her job on Suits & been liked by most? For years. No abused make-up artists or sound engineers with negative reports, at all…No negative word from anyone met via Trevor or Corey. If really shocking there would be I think, NB: Cilla Black.

She wasn't in a position of power . She was also in a group situation where any poor behaviour would be readily observed.

We’re creating multidimensional, interesting, kind, creative people. That’s who our kids are.

Unlike normal mortals who leave theirs to be raised by wolves, or of course the Waleses who probably insist on them wearing ducal coronets at breakfast, in HaM world.

I know there's been discussion about how everything they do is now pitched to a middle class US audience, but I've known/know quite a few Americans who fit that bill. NONE of them would make a comment like that without falling about laughing at themselves.

So the Pamela Anderson cooking series trailer is actually from late 2023, but for some reason it's taken ages for her programme to air. She's already done a home renovation series (with her grown up sons) about the property she bought for her grandmother and a gardening series. Her cooking series is off the back of her vegan cookbook which came out some ears ago, and her veganism is a longstanding passion. Someone on X has done a side by side of Pamela's cooking trailer and Meghan's more recent one, and the latter is practically word for word, image to image the same.

Why has Netflix allowed this to happen? It just feels like bullying or dismissing a "lesser" star whose series is shown in Canada, not the US. Maybe they didn't dream in a million years that Pamela would be going through the acting/public profile renaissance that she is having at them moment, and that anybody would notice. It's all just so poorly thought through and executed.

There are lots of photos of her with beautiful tightly curled hair.

She has naturally curly hair. I actually think it’s gorgeous. I would be interested in finding out how she deals with her hair on a daily basis if she were ever willing to do a beauty blog/brand. That would be interesting.

But it's power isn't it. You can't behave badly if you are not top of the tree.