I can tell you the exact moment during my binge-watch of Meghan,the Duchess of Sussex’s glossy, $100 million lifestyle and hosting series, ‘With Love, Meghan’, that I felt I was going to scream. You may have felt the same. She had just spent 30 minutes baking dog biscuits from scratch as a gift for longtime polo-wife pal Delfina Blaquier’s dog in the kitchen of the lavish Montecito home in which the show is filmed (not Prince Harry and Meghan’s lavish Montecito home, mind you, but a rental some kilometres down the road).
We’d just watched the former royal patiently waiting for said dog biscuits to cool before popping them into a brand new, shabby chic jar, getting a calligraphy pen with which to label them, and tying a satin ribbon around the lid. ‘Surely, she’s finished with the dog biscuits now,’ I thought. But, she wasn’t.
Despite telling us, ‘We’re not in the pursuit of perfection. We’re in the pursuit of joy’, Meghan then went on to show us how to meticulously trim the end of the ribbon with scissors so it had just the perfect ‘V’. My mind was filled with my abysmal Christmas present wrapping, done with a glass of wine in the dark in the spare room last year, the pursuit of both joy and perfection a distant glimmer.
There are parts of the show, which features the former lifestyle blogger and actress inviting a series of guests to either teach her cooking or learn hosting from her, which should have a trigger warning for those of us whom an abundance of time is simply an unthinkable luxury. I have a low-tolerance for watching someone else enjoy languorous pursuits because I have a job; I have a three-year-old and a four-month-old, and I have a to-do list long enough to reach Montecito and knock on Meghan’s door.
I haven’t had any time to myself since 2021. I barely have time to wipe my own bottom of a morning before my cat, toddler and husband simultaneously burst into the bathroom in chase of one another – let alone make my own focaccia. I felt my mental load increase and my chest tighten as each episode passed (‘Should I be making my own skincare, too?’ I pondered. ‘Should I have a local bee-keeper to buy honey from?!’)
This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the show: I really did. I binge-watched all eight episodes and dare I say I’m looking forward to the second season, which was confirmed last week. I think the show does exactly what it sets out to; it’s Meghan’s perfect pivot back from Royal to roving influencer, and we could all use a light comfort watch right now in between The White Lotus. This appears to be something of a brave viewpoint in the face of all the reviews and viral TikToks which have been keen to tell us just how jarring it - and she - is, monopolising on the hate that is regularly directed at the Duchess for no real reason.
Some of the complaints about the show, particularly that the inordinate wealth on display is jarring at a time when most of us are struggling financially, are valid. At one point during episode two, where Mindy Kaling comes to learn about hosting a kids’ party, Meghan pops £7000 worth of fresh fruit on a platter in the shape of a rainbow, which is a nice idea until you imagine the 20 illness-ridden sets of small hands which would finger that platter before it would mostly find its way into the bin. As a keen Real Housewives viewer, however, I am well versed in watching well-dressed women fritter money in their California mansions, and so that wasn’t too galling.
For me, With Love, Meghan’s biggest blind spot is that Markle ignores the fact that much of her target audience: women and mothers, simply don’t have the disposable time to host, nor to spend hours on the above-and-beyond creations she is suggesting, as much as we might love to. Most of us are juggling so many different things for other people that our brains are overflowing at night. There has never been more pressure on mothers to do it all and do it perfectly, with an explosion of mummy vloggers – and Trad Wives- on social media all fitting workouts in between living off their land.
With Love, Meghan’s ‘spare time gap’ made me hyper-aware of how little free time I really have to do nice things. The abundance of time on display felt almost wanton. For every ‘lavender towel’ Markle soaked in essential oils, rolled and popped in the fridge so you could have your own ‘hotel experience’ at home, I could only think of the far more essential things I hadn’t done that day, like mop my kitchen floor. While Markle had time to make ‘sun tea’, popping the water and tea bags into the Montecito sun so it could steep over hours, ready for her guests to arrive, I was thinking about how I had to empty both of our nappy bins before I could go to bed that night. Maybe a day will come when I can enter my ‘superfluous hostess touches’ era, but I feel far from it right now.
Whilst encouraging us to make our own balloon arches for children’s parties, Markle says, ‘If you have a little bit of time, you can do this and you can feel as though you’ve gotten your hands into it. I also just appreciate that you can say you did it for your kids.’ Busy working parents would love nothing more than to create more magical moments and bespoke creations for their darling children if only they weren’t so busy juggling inflexible work hours with childcare that costs more than their mortgage. It was my son’s third birthday last week and, after the kind of day which makes you long to take up marathon training just so you can get out of the house on your own, my husband and I endeavoured to turn our kitchen into a Frozen-themed wonderland using Amazon Primed snowflakes and balloons ready for him to wake up to. He was thrilled with it, but we wanted to throttle one another by the time the ‘ice palace’ was complete. You wouldn’t get that in Montecito.
We shouldn’t require our influencers and lifestyle gurus to be relatable or realistic; there is a certain joy in escapism and aspiration. It hasn’t done Gwyneth Paltrow’s business much harm that 99.9% of us wouldn’t dream of steam cleaning our vaginas, as she infamously suggested via Goop. But for many of us, the pursuit of perfection when it comes to homemaking and hosting feels like a logistical and financial impossibility, and Markle would do well to add in a glug of relatability in that respect if she’s to win over more of her audience. But, I have to admit, If I win the lottery, I might just try that fruit rainbow.