The Real Reason People Don't Like 'With Love, Meghan' is because of Racism and Misogynoir

At the beginning of the year, I decided that since the entire world feels like an absolute dumpster fire, I needed to find some creative outlets to counteract the incessant desire to doom scroll, for the sake of my mental health and my brain cells. On the shortlist was more reading, resuming pottery, and learning to crochet. So I looked for some classes and got my self signed up, with delusional dreams of making sweaters and handbags and cool hats.

This past Monday was my second class, and honestly I was excited because I’m really digging it so far.

As class begins, we sit in a circle, yarn and needle in hand, and our Bohemian chic instructor, donning an outfit comprised almost entirely by items she crocheted herself, shows us the stitch we are learning that day and then we commence to practice on our own, while she walks around lending us assistance and answering our questions. As we all get comfortable with the stitch we're working on, the chatting commences.

We usually yap about anything and everything — what we want to make, what we did over the weekend, reality tv….all the things.

The woman seated to my left, who seems really cool — I mean I'm only basing this off the vibes from our first class and off her taste in television — she watches Housewives and Love Is Blind — casually asked me if I've seen Meghan Markle's new Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, simultaneously gushing about how much she’s loving it.

Before I even got a chance to respond, a woman seated across from us groans, and says, "I watched half of the first episode and turned it off. I hated it."

And while I wanted to ignore her, and trust me, I really wanted to because I took up crocheting for its creative and peaceful qualities. Because the repetitive nature of stitching is supposed to be relaxing and de-stressing, soothing even. But I just couldn't help myself, and also important to note, I'm the only Black woman in the class. So I swallowed the words that I really wanted to say — “Who asked you what you thought? Ma'am no one was even talking to you” — and instead opted to engage with curiosity.

Me: Really? Why didn't you like it?

Them: I just didn't enjoy it and also, she's so just so out of touch and unrelatable.

Me: Well, she is a literal duchess. I wouldn't really expect her to have similar lifestyles to us.

Them: I mean yes, of course, but like, she was an actress and now she’s cosplaying as some off brand Martha Stewart.

Me: Did you watch the Marta Stewart documentary? She was working in finance and got burned out so she started cooking and turned it into a billion dollar business. So I'm not really seeing the point you're trying to make.

Them: You can't really compare what she's doing to Martha Stewart. That woman has dozens of cook books, multiple tv shows, she sells her products in stores all over the world.

Me: True, but she didn't start like that. Before you have dozens of cook books, you have one cookbook. Before you have multiple shows, you have one show. But anyways, besides the fact that you find her unrelatable, what else didn't you like about the show?

Them: I just didn't like it.

Me: Hmmmm…interesting. I was just asking because I’ve seen a lot of white women online expressing their dislike of the show and I’m just trying to understand.

Them: I’m not sure what you’re getting at but this has nothing to do with race.

Me: The only thing I’m getting at is wanting to know why you hated the show.

Them: I feel like you’re attacking me and all I was doing was giving my opinion.

I felt the 8 pairs of eyeballs that had been ping ponging between myself and this other person while this verbal tennis match ensued, idling on me to see how I would respond.

Me: I’m not attacking you, and to be clear, I never asked you for your opinion so we don’t have to talk about it anymore.

The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, or rather, a crochet needle. And finally, our bohemian chic instructor broke the silence, announcing that it was time for our mid-class stretch.

I had already planned to talk about this little interaction because of the abundance of discussion about Meghan Markle’s show all over the internet, most of it led by white women, critiquing the show as being “unrelatable”, “exhausting”, and “smug”.

It’s ironic that on the cusp of Black History Month and during Women’s History Month, white women all over the internet are rallying together to express their extreme dislike of a Black woman who is just minding her business, tending to her garden, and making focaccia.

Here are a few samples for reading pleasure:

Katie Rosseinsky, senior culture and lifestyle writer at The Independent, referred to the show as “queasy and exhausting” in her review.

In a Times article, columnist Carol Midgley, spoke of the show saying, "If you thought 'With Love, Meghan,' the Duchess of Sussex’s new lifestyle show, would be a smug, syrupy endurance watch, and that you would rather fry your eyeballs than sit through it, I have news for you. It is so much worse than that."

Katya Zamolodchikova, star of RuPaul's Drag Race, said the show "is the most deranged fucking thing I have ever seen."

With this whole debacle already on my mind, I opened my email to see a Substack which had landed in my inbox, written by a well known (white) author of two self help books, with a relatively large platform. And what do you know? It was an entire article about why Meghan Markle's new show isn't landing right. But don't worry, she didn't blame it on Meghan. She claims ‘people are out to get her’ and the producers ‘either hate her or are lazy’. She continues on to point out all the problems with the show through the lens of her own expertise.

I didn't even bother finishing the article, instead opting to head down to the comment section to see dozens of comments affirming the author's critiques. While I don't know the race of all the commenters, everyone who did have a face avatar had one thing in common. They were all white.

Here's one of the comments:

"THANK GOD you said it. The show is just insufferable, and that’s coming from someone who’s watched A LOT of Martha."

I find it truly puzzling that in 2025, a white woman (with a platform and influence) would spend their time and energy dissecting how a Black woman could have done something better when there are an infinite amount of better uses of their time, all of which include talking to (and about) other white women.

Here's a short list of things that immediately came to my mind:

1) Write an article about how preposterous it is that the grifter, Rachel Hollis, got yet another book deal.

2) Write an article about how Gwen Steffani is now endorsing the Hallo app, which is backed by Peter Theil, a far right billionaire, “who rejects the ‘woke’ ideology of equity, and who is also one Don the Con’s biggest supporters.

3) Write an article about how Mel Robbins, author of The Let Them Theory, allegedly plagiarized the idea from Cassie Phillips, who wrote a poem called “Let Them” that went viral in 2022.

I’m going to get right to the point:

Racism and misogynoir are the reasons for the scathing reviews of With Love, Meghan.

Misogynoir, a term coined by Moya Bailey, is the aversion to, the contempt of, and the ingrained prejudice against Black women. It’s the combined force of anti-Black racism and misogyny directed towards Black women.

Meghan Markle is the real life embodiment of a regular girl (albeit already successful) who marries a prince. It's a fairy tale as old as time. There's only one problem. Meghan doesn't fit the profile of a Disney princess, not the one we've collectively been sold anyways. She's not Snow White or Cinderella or Belle. She's Black and in this country, Black girls aren't supposed to be princesses.

And before you write me off or think that perhaps I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, do you remember a few years back, when Disney announced they had cast Halle Bailey for the part of Ariel in the live action remake of The Little Mermaid? Do you remember how racist insults and comments flooded the internet expressing outrage that Ariel, a mermaid, was being played by a Black woman? Hashtags like #notmyariel were trending all over social media, and YouTube actually hid the dislike counter on the official video after it garnered over 1.5 million dislikes and a blatantly racist comment section. All this outrage because there was just no way a fictional, mythological creature that lives in the ocean could be Black.

So if people had a problem with a mermaid being Black, well they certainly have a problem with a real life princess (duchess to be more accurate) being Black.

White women don't find Meghan Markle relatable because they don't see themselves in Meghan. They don’t relate to seeing Black women exist in spaces of luxury. They don't relate to Black women being princesses or having lives easier than they believe their own lives to be. So how dare Meghan be cooking and gardening for fun and pleasure? Because what their internalized anti-Blackness is really screaming is that people who look like Meghan should be serving them, not living lives that feel more carefree than their own and parading it around on Netflix for other people to see.

Martha is aspirational. A feminist badass.

Meghan is unrelatable. Insufferable.

Perhaps it’s because when people are used to seeing themselves represented as the standard, it's hard to see someone who doesn't look like them doing things that they, likely unconsciously, have ascribed to whiteness, and thus, the whole thing must be written off as exhausting.

It's also important to note that Meghan is a mixed race, light skinned Black woman in a country that is built on colorism; where the lighter your skin, the better your treatment, and still, this is how she is treated. So how do you suppose darker skinned Black women are fairing?

And let's make one thing clear, I'm not a Meghan Markle stan. I didn't watch the documentary or the Oprah interview. I'm not caught up on the intricacies of her life or work. I don't need to be to clearly understand the unreasonably harsh critiques she is receiving.

Because if Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow can create empires out of homemaking and wellness without being called insufferable and being ripped to shreds across the internet, why can’t Meghan?

Because of racism and misogynoir.

In 2020, when anti-racism was cool and trendy and white folks put up black squares of solidarity all across social media, committing to unlearning their internalized white supremacy, many Black folks, myself included, understood that it would likely be short lived. Despite the fact that it’s no longer cool or trendy, I will continue to stress the importance of recognizing and unlearning your unconscious bias. And for white women, I urge you to use your time and energy towards uplifting Black women and other women of color, rather than criticizing. It costs nothing to keep your critiques to yourself. Additionally, when you see your fellow white women engaging in behavior that is racist in nature, whether intentional or not, I urge you to call them out and also to stop financially supporting them. In the year 2025, people’s racism isn’t because of lack of knowledge, it’s because of lack of care, and it’s time we stop making excuses for piss poor behavior.

In good news, despite all the haters, With Love, Meghan has already been renewed for season 2, racists and misogynists be damned. Anyways, that's it for now. I'm off to make the one pot pasta from episode one.

Thank you so much for reading The Liberation Collective. I’m eternally grateful to have you here. You can also follow along on Instagram and TikTok. And if you want to partner with me, you can email me at info@chrissyking.com

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