The Duchess of Sussex has revealed how she felt about people telling her she was “so lucky” the Duke of Sussex “chose her” when the pair announced their engagement in 2017.
Speaking on the third episode of her podcast, Archetypes, with this week’s guest Mindy Kaling, Meghan Markle retorted: “Well I chose him too”.
Markle was responding to a discussion led by Kaling in which she revealed that, when she was younger, she would value her worth on whether a man was interested in her.
Meghan said: “My own experience of that, when I started dating my husband and we became engaged, everyone was just like, ‘Oh my god, you’re so lucky he chose you!’
“And when you have to hear it a million times over you’re sort of 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 because you chose me.’”
Meghan added that the phrase “you’re so lucky” when spoken to a woman about a romantic relationship is “gendered, archetyped [sic] and stereotyped”.
“It just feeds into this idea that you’re waiting for someone to tell you that you’re good enough as a person, knowing that you’re good enough on your own,” the Duchess added.
Elsewhere in the episode, Meghan revealed that she received a “A” grade for planning her “dream wedding” at school.
“I remember every little thing about it. I wanted it to be at the Bel-Air Hotel,” she said.
“There was a swan lake and I wanted the cake to be from Hansen’s Bakery and the dress… oh my goodness. The dress was strapless, pouffy and I’d seen it in a bridal magazine.”
