Like all myths, cause and effect are problematic, and the numbers don’t quite add up, but the basics are indisputable. In 1995, Meghan saw a commercial for Ivory Clear Dishwashing Liquid with the tagline: “Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.” According to an account she gave at a United Nations conference in the years when she was still a relatively unknown actress, ‘Two boys from my class said, “Yeah. That’s where women belong — in the kitchen.” I remember feeling shocked and angry and also just feeling so hurt. It just wasn’t right, and something needed to be done.’ Thomas Markle Sr encouraged her to write letters of complaint, which, by her own account, she did, mailing them to the First Lady Hillary Clinton, the high-profile women’s rights advocate Gloria Allred, and Proctor and Gamble the manufacturers of Ivory Clear Dishwashing Liquid. While the First Lady and the controversial lawyer responded, Proctor and Gamble did not. According to Meghan, a month later they replaced the ad with one that said that “People all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.” This led her to believe that her complaint had been responsible for the change. As she put it to the UN, ‘It was at that moment that I realized the magnitude of my actions. At the age of 11, I had created my small level of impact by standing up for equality.’
Empowering though that message was, there are four difficulties with the scenario, all of which were picked up once Meghan and Harry started going out seriously and the palace did the background checks it does on all people who become closely involved with the royals. Firstly, Meghan was not eleven in 1995, but fourteen. Secondly, Hillary Clinton was not First Lady in 1992, when Meghan was eleven, but became First Lady in 1993, when Meghan was twelve. Thirdly, there is no evidence that her sole letter altered the course of history. Proctor and Gamble indubitably changed its tagline, but it was optimistic of Meghan to suppose that it did so as a result of one letter written by the eleven or even fourteen year old Meghan Markle. Lastly, no advertising agency could replace an advertisement in a month. Advertisements take months to prepare. They are parts of advertising campaigns in which spontaneity and responsiveness of the sort to which Meghan was laying claim simply do not exist. Had she suggested that hers might have been one of the many letters that led to change; had she not provided such a tight timeline, which proved that her letter could have had no impact whatsoever, she would have been on firmer ground. But by presenting the facts as she did, she undermined the legitimacy of her claims. In the process, she opened herself up to suspicions that would lead a courtier, who values integrity, to conclude that she was a ‘typical Hollywood type. . …always pushing herself forward in the most obvious manner, when a more modest and realistic approach would have indicated integrity. As it is, when one watches the tape of that speech, one winces at her rank egotism, not to mention the naiveté displayed by so many Hollywood types, who think, because they have said that black is white and pink is green, everyone accepts this fiction as fact.’
In fairness to Meghan, she is a creature of Hollywood. The values there are different from those of palaces. Fantasy and self-promotion are not frowned upon, nor is exaggeration, all of which are viewed as valid tools for ‘getting your message across.’ A fourteen year old who writes a letter which garners praise from her school, as hers did, and which earns the standard responses that the Hillary Clintons and Gloria Allreds customarily send out to anyone who contacts them, nevertheless has just cause to be proud of her accomplishment, even if she unknowingly mistakes the polite response that public figures send out as being something more personal, and further believes that, because the company then altered its tagline, it did so as a result of her letter.
Be that as it may, this was one of those turning points that each individual has in his or her life. Like any other, it also had long-reaching effects. Just as how it empowered Meghan to conclude that her actions had had more of an effect than they could possibly have had, thereby encouraging her to adopt the role of activist, it also induced people who would otherwise have viewed her neutrally, to suspect her of inflating herself beyond her natural entitlement. This is where the exacting standards of the Old World collide with the embellishments of the New. Self-promotion and exaggeration have traditionally been viewed with suspicion in the royal and aristocratic worlds, where one’s word has always been one’s bond. There is an elaborate code of behaviour preventing people from too-overtly pushing themselves forward or laying claim to what isn’t theirs by right. Indeed, British history is full of people who have gone to the executioner’s block or otherwise ruined themselves rather than dishonour themselves by over-egging the pudding or in any other way compromising their integrity. A case in point was Terence Rattigan’s 1946 hit play The Winslow Boy, which was based upon an infamous case when my late friend Mary Archer-Shee’s cousin Martin nearly bankrupted himself to defend his son George against the unfair accusation of having stolen a five shilling postal order, which he denied having taken. While things have loosened up enough for traditionalists to know that
