Why does it bother us that "With Love, Meghan" is so nice?
People didn't like Martha Stewart because she didn't act nice and they don't like Meghan because...she does?
Last year I had a piece blow up here:
The TL:DR — women in the homemaking space are expected to act in a certain, sweet-natured way which wasn’t Martha Stewart. She was routinely branded a bitch. A monster, even. But we need women like Martha Stewart to prove that you don’t have to be “sugar and spice and all things nice” to occupy the cooking / gardening / crafting sphere.
Then, Meghan Markle (I know “it’s Sussex now” but for the purposes of this article, I’m going with the name she is more well known for) came along. Her new Netflix show With Love, Meghan is nice. Pleasant. A soft-focus, escapist form of TV.
And the world has ripped it — and her — to shreds for it.
Now, I know. Whenever Meghan Markle is involved in anything, you can guarantee a nasty little pile-on just because of who she is. The woman has been at the sticky end of criticism (to put it mildly) for as long as she’s been with Harry. Thus, it’s difficult to untangle who Meghan actually is compared to what the world thinks she is. Everyone has an opinion, yet no one really knows. Just as we don’t know what anyone in the public sphere is truly like.
We only have their word for who they are.
But if we take Meghan’s new show at face value — if we believe it is a reflection of who she is (at least in part) — she comes across as everything I argued in my Martha Stewart story we expect women in the domestic sphere to be. Someone interested in keeping people happy through cooking, hostessing. Someone nice.
And yet, she is criticised for that. I’ve seen stories call With Love, Meghan bland. Saccharine. Lacking edge. No tension. Boring.
Too nice. Possibly too nice to be trusted?
I’m not here to dissect Meghan Markle as a person. Enough people have done that already. What I am more interested in is what the response to her show says about how we expect women in the homemaking space to behave.
Because if we hate With Love, Meghan for being too nice — and hated Martha for not being nice enough — it begs the question:
Can we ever win?
There is a psychological phenomenon — one that specifically relates to women — that is very apt here. The likeability trap:
You’re either told you're too much, too assertive, too aggressive, you need to tone it down. Or you're told you're not enough.
Think about Martha Stewart, and you’ve got the aggressive / assertive side of the spectrum.
Meghan, on the other hand, went down the likeability route. And it backfired.
You could argue that this has more to do with what people think about Meghan than with likeable women as a whole. Except there is evidence to suggest that likeable women in the public eye are criticised for being too nice more often than you’d think.
In 2009, the BBC ranked Delia Smith — a British household name in cooking and lifestyle — towards the bottom of a talent league table. They called her someone with “occasional sparkle (but limited appeal).”
She too was criticised for being boring by British TV chef Anthony Worrall Thompson. He called her the “Volvo of cooking.”
Too nice. Not enough edge.
Sound familiar, Meghan?
The likeability paradox takes on another layer when you are beautiful, as I would argue Meghan is. Apparently, the more beautiful you are in the business world (make no mistake, With Love, Meghan is very much a business), the less trustworthy and truthful you are perceived to be.
Anyone who has followed Meghan since she became Harry’s girlfriend will know that she is often considered anything but trustworthy or truthful. Someone once told me she thought Meghan was a deceitful little bitch intent on ruining the royal family.
But perhaps she isn’t a royal family-ruining American fraud. Perhaps she is just a woman who happened to fall in love with a man more laden with baggage than many of us can ever comprehend.
Perhaps she is exactly how she presents herself on With Love, Meghan.
Perhaps she is…nice??
Whilst watching the show, I wondered how much of the Meghan criticism (or is that nice woman criticism?) overshadows some of the genuinely good elements. Because there are quite a few, especially when it comes to the food.
In the episode Two Kids from LA she brings on Korean-American chef Roy Choi who makes some seriously good looking food. Kimchi paste with watermelon? That’s something I would make and devour, as would the brined-fried-chicken lacquered with crying tiger sauce. The chemistry between Meghan and Roy is genuinely joyful. As an episode, it works.
The same is true in The Juice is Worth the Squeeze. Mexican chef Ramon Velazquez makes a chicken tinga that’s going in my rotation.
There is a lot of online praise too for Meghan’s one pot spaghetti. The Washington Post called it legit. The Cut called it phenomenal.
Yes, other parts of the show are not my thing. The balloon arch, the gardening-themed party favours, and the ladybug crostinis for instance. But hey, I don’t have kids, so perhaps for a certain demographic, that stuff works. And I’ve certainly been invited to enough children’s parties filled with more Pinterest-fuelled over-the-top BS than balloons and animal-themed sandwiches.
No, this particular brand of domesticity isn’t my vibe. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t substance here — there is. Yet, it’s overshadowed by the criticism of its host.
I saw one article that said the only episode you should watch is the one with Mindy Kaling. The episode where Meghan, now infamously, chides Kaling for using her maiden name (“it’s so funny you keep saying Meghan Markle, you know I’m Sussex now”).
If all you want to do is criticise Meghan and the “blandness” of the show, then perhaps this is the only episode you should watch.
But we can — and should — do better than that.
I must say that I’ve never understood the Meghan hate. I never cared that the Royal Family was “infiltrated” by an American biracial woman because, like many of my fellow Brits (about half in fact), I do not support the monarchy.
No, her brand of domesticity isn’t what I would personally choose to watch. As I said in my Martha Stewart piece:
(There is) a societal expectation that women should serve through domesticity with smiles on their faces. They should be sweet and nice.But not all women are nice, nor should we be. There are too many women in the world with Good Girl Syndrome — the pathological desire to people please.
And when you think about cooking and entertaining you don’t automatically have to think pleasant, submissive, nice women.
It doesn’t have to work like that. In fact, it shouldn’t.
But this is about more than my reservations on traditional feminine domesticity. This is about how women in the homemaking sphere run the risk of criticism whoever they are, however they present themselves.
Martha Stewart is a bitch, Meghan is bland.
Meghan dressed in a beekeeper’s suit is called “preposterous” by one op-ed piece, yet David Beckham did exactly the same thing in his documentary and no one batted an eyelid.
Whilst Delia Smith wasn’t sexy enough, Nigella Lawson was called so flirtatious that her contemporary Gary Rhodes once said “viewers were attracted to her smile rather than her cooking.”
Women in the domestic sphere (and as a food writer, I count myself in that) can’t win. We’re stuck in the likeability trap. And that isn’t just reserved for Meghan, even if she has a tougher time than most.
You see the problem. Now, what are we going to do about it?
I'm going on the record to say I love Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. She's the best part of Harry's life, and gave him what he needed more than anything - his own children, so he can be their devoted dad. Whatever she wants to do is OK with me.
This piece gave me a lot to consider. The "too nice" complaint reminds of Taylor Swift and how people don't like her without a genuine reason for disliking her. Likability isn't an achievable measure for any human, yet popularity or infamy is. Interesting topic.