Meghan Markle offered a little insight into the gendered reaction she faced after she and Prince Harry announced their engagement in 2017.
“Everyone was just like, ‘Oh, my God, you’re so lucky he chose you,’” the Duchess of Sussex told guest Mindy Kaling on Tuesday’s episode of her Spotify podcast, “Archetypes.”
“And at a certain point, after you hear it a million times over, you’re like, ‘Well, I chose him, too!’” she continued, before praising Harry, whom she married in 2018.
“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,’” she continued.
“But it is gendered and it’s archetyped and it’s stereotyped that ‘you’re so lucky,’” Meghan added. “And it just feeds into this idea that you’re waiting for someone to tell you that you’re good enough, as opposed to knowing that you’re good enough on your own.”
The interview, which also touches on Kaling’s “joys, challenges, and stigmas of her life as a single, unmarried woman” and “her decision to start a family on her own,” kicked off with Meghan describing a project she was given on marriage at her private Catholic school.
The Duchess of Sussex said that when she was only 14, she planned her wedding as part of an assignment at her all-female school.
The royal recalled some details about her then-dream wedding, saying that she wanted it to be at the Bel-Air Hotel and to wear a dress that “was strapless and poofy” (not at all what she chose for her second, royal wedding a few years ago).
“What strikes me now, from my 40-something vantage point, is the fact that this project was even graded at all,” she said. “The fact that this project even existed! At no point, could you say, ‘Nope, my dream for the future is to be single.’”
“The message, even at my feminist all-girls school, was as traditional as it gets,” Meghan said.
Tuesday marks Meghan’s third episode out of 12 from her new series, which is part of a major deal between Spotify and Archewell Audio. So far, the duchess has interviewed her friend Serena Williams and singer Mariah Carey.
For next week’s episode, the royal will dive into conversation with comedian and activist Margaret Cho, as well as journalist Lisa Ling.