How Meghan’s cheery, happy disposition is driving Page Six, Kinsey Schofield and Tom Sykes absolutely mental
As if the drop of her walk in the woods with her family was not enough, and the scene of Harry fishing with their children, and then the kids warming their feet by the fire was not enough, Duchess Meghan has done it again. She has dropped a second carousel of images and these are even more devastatingly adorable than the ones from Sunday – if that is even possible. It was to celebrate her husband’s 42nd birthday. And boy, does she paint an image of an enviable home life with her brood.
There is something terribly inconvenient about a woman who refuses to be as miserable as everyone expects her to be.
And Meghan is looking inconveniently happy.
Not triumphant in the obvious way. Not standing behind a podium settling scores. Not granting another interview to explain herself. Not answering every accusation thrown in her direction. No. Meghan has done something far more irritating.
She posted a cheery little family video that shows that contrary to popular opinion, the noise created around the Sussexes remains OUTSIDE. Inside, there is tranquility and peace and so much love.
And apparently, that was enough to send the detractors spiraling.
Page Six described Harry and Meghan’s latest offering as “cheery” and “hyper-curated.” Royal commentator Kinsey Schofield questioned the couple’s position on privacy (and other “niceties”), while journalist Tom Sykes criticized the idealized presentation of their family life.
I read the complaints and thought:
Oh, they felt that video. Hard. Because if Meghan’s greatest offence is that her family video looks happy, loving, beautiful and—heaven forbid—curated and “cheery”, I am going to need Meghan to curate harder. Give us better lighting, Meghan. More flowers. More muddy boots. More beautiful food. More children laughing just beyond the camera. More Harry looking relaxed and unmistakably at home with his wife and children….what cute feet does the Duke have…
Make the next one so gorgeously edited that Kinsey Schofield requires smelling salts. And, but wait. Meghan’s gone ahead and done just that. With the Happy birthday Harry snaps that just dropped today. Lordy, lordy. People have really lost it now.
What exactly irritates them? First, as I said, Meghan looks happy.
That alone violates the storyline written for her. She was supposed to leave Britain chastened, diminished and permanently haunted by everything she had lost. She was supposed to come back to a dilapidated house with her tail between her legs.
Instead, she appears cheerful, creative and very much engaged with her own life and word is she is living in an 83 acre, £12 million pound mansion.
Second, Harry looked happy with her. Its bad enough the marriage didn’t crack up. But they are still happy together, like a bunch of lovesick teenagers.
That may be the deeper injury. That’s what has created the gash.
Years of commentary have insisted that the Duke of Sussex must be miserable, trapped, isolated or secretly longing to escape. Yet the man appearing beside Meghan continues to look like a husband who genuinely enjoys his wife. They hold hands like teenagers. They kiss like new lovers. They parent like a pride of lions with their cubs. No wonder the temperature rises whenever they laugh together.
As if this is not all enough, Meghan’s reels show that the family dwells in beautiful surroundings.
Yes, the images were carefully selected. That is what people do when they create a video for public consumption. Page Six itself does not publish whichever photograph happens to fall out of the camera. Magazines choose their images. Newspapers choose their headlines. Television producers choose their camera angles. We choose how we present ourselves to the world. Otherwise women would appear outside without makeup and bras. Men would just skip clothes altogether. Indeed, curating is a form of conformity. We all conform.
But when Meghan chooses what to show, suddenly curation becomes evidence of moral failure.
Please, folks. Get yourselves permission to want and have a happy life like Meghan’s.
Privacy has never meant–and you all bloody well know it–surrendering all control over your own story. It means deciding what remains private and what you wish to share. Harry and Meghan can protect their children’s identities while offering a glimpse of family happiness. Those positions are not contradictory.
What the critics appear to want is not authenticity. They want access—and preferably access to unhappiness as they define it. They have labored to create that unhappiness on a daily basis for a decade. They feel cheated when what they see is the complete opposite of all their hard work.
This lot would happily accept a grainy photograph suggesting marital tension. They would devote days to an anonymous source claiming Harry was lonely and cheating on Meghan. They would analyze Meghan’s face for evidence of distress, and bring on divorce lawyers to analyse how the couple will split their real estate.
But a happy family video selected and released on Meghan’s terms?
Now that is intolerably “curated” and they call foul. One royal expert came onto live television with his bed behind him barely made and his shirt all twisted and misfitted, to gripe about Meghan’s curated images, while another female colleague brought on for the same interview slot called Meghan “absolutely intolerable.”
Of course it is curated! So is an Instagram page, a wedding album, a Christmas card and every flattering photograph ever chosen for publication. And curation starts before the camera is even clipped. It starts with the lip enhancement procedures, the brow lifts. The makeup worn to come onto television to lambaste Meghan. The very people accusing Meghan of curation, curate themselves on a daily basis to present an unauthentic version of themselves to a viewing public while accusing someone else of being unauthentic. The difference is that Meghan is curating herself instead of allowing hostile commentators to do it for her.
And that is where the video really dug in.
She controlled the frame.
She decided which moments belonged to the public. She showed affection without explaining it, family without surrendering it and happiness without asking anyone’s permission.
For women over 50, we can learn from Meghan because there is something particularly aspirational in that refusal to perform misery for people who expected it, and I think, by this point in our lives, we know this intuitively. Meghan’s happiness suggests that reinvention does not have to look defensive. A woman can leave a punishing environment, protect her peace and create something beautiful on the other side.
Perhaps the video is idealized.
Good.
After years of other people constructing the bleakest possible version of Meghan’s life, she is entitled to present the version she actually wishes to share.
Happiness is not always loud. Sometimes it is a home, a husband, children, laughter and the freedom to choose what the world gets to see.
And sometimes happiness is the best revenge precisely because it leaves your enemies with nothing to criticize except how happy you appear. Yes indeed, happiness is the best revenge.
So, please, Meghan:
More videos. Every. Single. Week.
Let each one be cheerier than the last.
And, darling, make them exquisitely curated.
