Meghan Markle has recalled her embarrassment of visiting a spa when she was a teenager as her Spotify podcast returns.
The Archetypes podcast had been put on "pause" for several weeks as the royals went into mourning following the sad death of the Queen. Today a brand new episode of the show dropped and it explores the "Dragon Lady" stereotype with journalist Lisa Ling and comedian Margaret Cho. In it, Meghan talks of growing up in Los Angeles which was “full of culture that you could see, feel, hear and taste on a daily basis” and said she had a “real love” of getting to know other cultures.
And she recalled how she and her mother Doria would often visit Korean spas, which left a young Meghan feeling "humbled".
She explained: "It's a very humbling experience for a girl going through puberty because you enter a room with women from ages nine to maybe 90, all walking around naked and waiting to get a body scrub on one of these tables that are all lined up in a row.
"All I wanted was a bathing suit, which you're not allowed by the way.
"Once I was over that adolescent embarrassment, my mom and I, we would go upstairs we would sit in a room and we would have a steaming bowl of the most delicious noodles.
"And we would look around at all of these other women.
"These beautiful Korean women who had embraced the generational tradition of the jimjilbang and shared it with one another."
Meghan said she was not aware of the stigmas faced by women of Asian descent until many years later.
The duchess said: “The Dragon Lady, the East Asian temptress whose mysterious foreign allure is scripted as both tantalising and deadly.
“This has seeped into a lot of our entertainment. But this toxic stereotyping of women of Asian descent, it doesn’t just end once the credits roll.”
Meghan and Prince Harry signed a lucrative deal with the audio streaming giant Spotify to host and produce podcasts, estimated to be worth around £18 million, in late 2020.
Archetypes was launched with the aim of investigating "labels that try to hold women back" through conversations between Meghan and historians, experts and women who have experienced being typecast.
In the first episode with tennis star Serena Williams, Meghan revealed how her and Harry’s son Archie narrowly escaped a fire in his bedroom when he was meant to be sleeping, during the Sussexes' tour of South Africa in 2019 - and how she had to go out after to do another official engagement.
Guests in the other two episodes of the podcast so far have also included pop singer Mariah Carey and comedian and actress Mindy Kaling.
