I enjoy the Duchess of Sussex’s Instagram so much, and I love that she’s gotten back to the point where she feels comfortable sharing family photos and updates about her life. My only criticism is that she should have gotten back on IG long before this year! I was one of the people begging her to get back on IG and I still think it’s one of the best PR/communications moves she’s made in recent years. With her personal IG and the As Ever IG (which is run by Meghan and her team), she’s able to subtly clarify situations, pivot away from certain storylines or change the narrative completely. Well, interestingly enough, American Vogue just published something about Meghan’s IG: “The Millennial-ness of Meghan Markle’s Instagram.” It’s basically like… wow, Meghan really is true to her “live laugh love” generation. An excerpt:
If you visit certain corners of the internet or read certain papers, you’ll find yourself amongst a populus convinced that Meghan Markle is some sort of manipulative, narcissistic mastermind. (“She wanted to be the victim because then she could convince Harry that it was an unbearable experience and they had no choice but to move to America,” an anonymous source told The Times of London. “She marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders. I’ve watched her reduce grown men to tears,” another anonymous source told The Hollywood Reporter.)
I’m not a psychiatrist. So I’ll refrain from weighing on what personality traits Markle does, or does not, have. Nor have I ever met Meghan. So I’ll also refrain from commenting on what she is, or is not, like.
But I won’t refrain from this: Markle’s Instagram presence makes her seem so… harmlessly millennial. Everything has a filter. (She loves a black-and-white photo). Captions contain the crying laughing emoji. (Gen Z prefers the skull.) She posts mood boards with cheesy sayings that seem plucked from Pinterest: “You cannot make everybody happy. You are not a jar of Nutella,” or “I love you with all my butt. I would say heart, but my butt is bigger.” There are also video slideshows and random photos with text overlaid. (“My husband’s hat gets a twirl,” reads a red caption over a photo of Prince Harry’s cowboy hat from Kemo Sabe.)
Before Meghan Markle joined the royal family, she had her own Instagram. She posted overly-saturated travel photos with her back to the camera, yoga poses, peonies, and inspirational quotes in millennial pink like “find what you love, love what you find.” Nearly everything was followed by a hashtag.
By the way, so did everyone else: in the mid 2010s, it was common to pose in front of dramatic backgrounds before slapping the Clarendon filter over it, and to share things that today wouldn’t warrant a post at all. (Back then, we didn’t have stories or slideshow features—and it showed.) The aesthetic Meghan had was the defining one of the social media platform.
But then in 2018, she logged off. It took her seven years—and a dramatic move from the United Kingdom—to log back on: this time, under the username of @meghan. But while the rest had moved onto a candid, darker-toned, photo dump style of posting, Meghan went right back to the highly saturated filtered-ness.
Her haters might call her presence cringey. Her stans might call it endearing. But no matter where you fall on that Markle spectrum, you can’t deny its disarming. It’s hard to have strong, angry feelings about a woman who posts cheesy quotes about Nutella, awkwardly dances in a hospital room, or posts captions about her children that says “love you more than all the stars in all the sky, all the raindrops, and all the salt on all the french fries in all the world.”
This sort of reminded me of something Tina Brown (of all people) said about Meghan this year. I’m paraphrasing, but Brown basically said that Meghan is throwing it back to the Obama administration. While Brown has said some awful sh-t which I do not cosign, I think the Obama-Era-ness of Meghan’s online energy is accurate. Meghan posts like it’s 2014, like the “British years” didn’t happen and the Trump catastrophes are not on her radar. As for the relative coolness or uncoolness of Meghan’s social media… she’s not “cool” like a Gen Zer, but I think the youths probably appreciate Meghan’s whole vibe and energy, right? If she’s on their radar whatsoever.
Photos courtesy of Meghan’s IG and As Ever’s IG.
