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The latest episode of Meghan Markle‘s Spotify podcast Archetypes touched upon yet another topic close to the Duchess of Sussex’s personal life. In the episode titled ‘The Stigma of Singleton’, the 41-year-old shared her experience with being called “lucky” that Prince Harry “chose her” to be his wife, in a discussion with comedian and writer Mindy Kaling.
The conversation saw the two women of color discuss topics such as being the “unpopular” one in school to being labeled “smart but not pretty” during their high school days. The duo also talked about Kaling’s experience as a single mother, and her decision to start a family on her own.
While dissecting the title for Kaling’s 2015 memoir, Why Not Me?, where The Office star penned down her desire to be wanted, Markle weighed in on the topic and said she had her “own experience” with a similar situation. “When I started dating my husband, we became engaged and everyone was just like, ‘Oh my god, you’re so lucky! He chose you!’” Meghan said. “And at a certain point, after you hear it a million times over, you’re like, ‘Well, I chose him too.’” But thankfully, I have a partner who was countering that narrative for me and going, ‘They’ve got it all wrong. I’m the lucky one, ’cause you chose me.’”
The mother-of-two talked about how comments like these are “archetyped” and “stereotyped”, and also shed light on how they foster the archaic idea that women are only complete with a man, never good enough on their own.
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Markle and Kaling bonded further over how both of them were made to feel less than when it came to physical appearances because of their ethnic backgrounds and how it affected them as children, making it a struggle to fit in. “Yeah, yeah, yeah… Like tons. Look, maybe not conventional beauty… now, maybe that would be seen as beautiful, but massive frizzy curly hair and a huge gap in my teeth… I was the smart one forever and ever and ever and ever,” Meghan said, before adding, “And and then I just sort of grew up.”
Kaling added to the conversation and remarked how liberating it was for her to hear that the Duchess had had a similar childhood, and shared that she doesn’t feel alone anymore because of the shared experiences. “Just what you said, that image is so vivid… The girl that you described, sitting by herself, being like, ‘How do I fill my day?’ And it’ll be by trying to be a leader. That makes me very emotional,” Kaling said. “I’m happy that people know that because I think people see you and they’re like, oh, my gosh, like the wedding, the couture fittings for that and this and that. I certainly didn’t know that about you. And it’s nice to know.”
