The Least I Could Do

How The Artist Formerly Known as Meghan Markle accidentally inspires me

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, makes a half-assed fruit salad that I am 100% going to copy. (Netflix)

Here’s something I didn’t understand about expectations of straight womanhood until I was married and a mother: no matter which partner in a heterosexual marriage has more flexibility and time, no matter how egalitarian the division of labor a couple has for household maintenance and parenting, no matter whose job what is– the appearance of the home and the appearance and behavior of the children is seen by society writ large as a reflection on the woman, not the man. One of our responsibilities, as moms, is to keep up appearances, to smooth things over, and make it all look effortless.

Dads can kick back and relax and let things go… and only rarely have it reflect poorly on them, unless somebody is bleeding or passed out or, in certain environments, if a lawn goes unmowed. And even then, the patriarchy-addled mind does a tumbling pass to point the finger at mom. This happens even to women who are in relationships where both partners really want things to feel fair to all parties (like mine). The stakes of imperfection are simply higher for moms. This is a fucking raw deal, especially if– like me– you don’t particularly enjoy entertaining.

I’m off work now, taking the second half of maternity leave left over from after Daisy was born last summer (I didn’t take all of it because I work in politically-adjacent media, and it was a presidential election year.) I have less time every day than I expected to have; turns out, the work of homemaking expands to fill the time it’s given and then some, especially with a preschooler running around undoing and dismantling and spilling things in the wake of whatever I’m cleaning. And the endless sisyphean task of laundry. And two aging pets who seem to be taking turns having dramatic health crises before making miraculous recoveries. And I’m also trying to do some writing, so my brain doesn’t dissolve. Because, my god, this lifestyle absolutely does not suit me.

My house looks better now than it looked 90% of the time before I was on leave, but if somebody came over and wanted to be entertained, as in served hors d'oeuvres and a cocktail with big-ass smooth ice cubes in it, I’d feel naked in my glaring unreadiness. All I’d have on hand is a selection of leftovers from meals I had time to make in the last week or so. Homemade jambalaya from a tupperware bowl. Some West Indian curry with pieces of halibut in it that I slightly overcooked. A bottle of wine I opened in the middle of the day the other day because I started thinking about how my three-year-old didn’t want to cuddle as much anymore and I started to despair. Some old pizza from a neighborhood place that makes terrible pizza, but we go there because they have a fenced-in back area where kids can run around, and it’s BYOB.

I’d apologize for the laundry that is somehow still piling up even though I feel like I just did a ton of it. I’d make a joke about all the loud, noisemaking baby and little kid toys shoved into baskets, which themselves are shoved into corners, which would draw more attention to the smallness of my house (I like my house! It’s just not big.). The fact that nothing matches, not even the wine glasses. The slobbery baby cracker that I’d forgotten to wash off Daisy’s high chair the other day because I hadn’t seen it, that has now turned into what can only be described as a “gluelike” substance. The snorting noise that my cat makes as she paces back and forth across the floor. I’d feel so embarrassed by my lack of energy to Do More that I’d avoid talking to that friend again for weeks.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, overwhelmed by Roy Choi’s fried chicken recipe. (Netflix)

We didn’t send out holiday cards this year, because I ran out of time to do it. I don’t think my husband stressed out about this for a second– why would he? It’s just not something that anybody would view as a reflection on him, and it’s not something that he’s ever thought was that important. It was important to me, because it reflects on me. I don’t want it to be important to me, but people think it should be, and so it is. And I dropped the ball. And now everybody who didn’t get a card from me knows– it’s because I’m overwhelmed! I’m less good at this than I should be. Utah-curled idiots who believe that vaccines cause autism can do this while homeschooling their eight kids. Why can’t I? Why don’t I want to do this? Why do I feel like I must?

Sometimes, to give me some time without children hanging off me, Josh will take both girls on a walk to a nearby park on a weekend morning. He’ll let them wear their pajamas. With the same certainty I normally reserve to assuming that the Minnesota Vikings will not win a Super Bowl in my lifetime, I know deep in my bones that the parents who see my husband with them on the playground, three-year-old’s hair completely unbrushed and wild and the baby pedaling the air in her footie pajamas, they are judging me. Not my husband– me. My husband is being a great dad for having fun with his kids. I am a bad mom for not brushing their hair and making sure they’re not in their pajamas before they leave the house.

If I’m grocery shopping with Juniper and she’s got a dirty face and is yelling “I’m Spider-man!” to random people passing us, I can see the scornful microexpressions. Why isn’t that mom keeping that little girl quiet– is that kid even a little girl?-- why is that mom letting that little girl dress in a head-to-toe Spider-man outfit from the boys’ section? Why is that little maybe-girl’s face dirty? Why does the mom seem stressed out by this? Why isn’t she Gentle Parenting? I try to communicate as much as I can to Juniper with my eyes, but it just makes her yell about Spider-man even more loudly. There’s nothing funnier to a three-year-old than stressing out her mother. I can’t say for sure unless I dress in male drag and try this, but I do not think that men who take their kids out in public by themselves get the same scorn flung at them by the occasional stranger.

I don’t know what I’m going to do for Daisy’s first birthday party in a few months. I don’t know when I’m going to plan it. But if nothing gets planned or what is planned turns out to be lackluster, I feel it in my bones that even our forward-thinking graduate school degree-having blue state friends will judge me instead of my husband. I know moms who seem to adore this kind of work– and good for them. I’m not wired to plan children’s birthday parties or add cute little touches to nurseries or chase people around with a wet rag wiping sticky handprints off things constantly. I can cook, grow plants, keep animals alive, and that’s it.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and good sport Mindy Kaling enter an child’s birthday party that contains no children. (Netflix)

And this extremely long windup brings me to my point this week: an appreciation for a woman who has even more support than I do and nothing but time, but still shrugs off society’s expectation that a mom of two with no 9-to-5 job and a whole-ass household staff do more than the absolute least. I’m talking of course of With Love, Meghan on Netflix.

With Love, Meghan must have been pitched as a way for a mega-famous public figure to define herself beyond pissing off all the racists in the British royal family and tabloid press, by presenting a soft, no-stakes lifestyle show that is both aspirational and accessible. But what the show does is make it seem like Meghan, Duchess of Sussex– like me– does not particularly enjoy entertaining. She’s a little bored and a little lonely and a little annoyed and also trying both a little too hard and also not hard enough. Perhaps a better title for it would have been Regards, Meghan or Hope This Helps, Meghan. It is exactly the kind of lifestyle show I’d make if I was forced to host a lifestyle show.

My curiosity was first piqued when I saw a clip on social media of Meghan awkwardly correcting Mindy Kaling about her last name. Kaling had referred to the host as “Meghan Markle,” which is the name that most people on earth know her as. Meghan said that she’s actually Meghan Sussex, because her royal title was (is?) Duchess of Sussex. I was perplexed about why the editing team would leave that in the show, as, like I mentioned, the moment is awkward and strange, and makes The Artist Formerly Known as Meghan Markle seem a bit like a wet blanket on Kaling’s noble attempts at injecting a little warmth into the ice-white kitchen set.

[It reminds me a little of the comments beneath news stories about a very famous person’s wife or girlfriend. Strident commenters are always quick to point out “She has a name!” Yes, but her male partner is more famous than she is, and sometimes the fame of the male partner is why a news story involving the woman is newsworthy in the first place. News organizations get higher ad rates if more people read their stories, and more people will read stories if the name of the more recognizable figure is in the headline! But I digress.]

In that same episode– where Meghan plans a pretend child’s birthday party that she and Mindy attend alone, with no children present– Meghan demonstrates how to arrange cut up fruit in a rainbow shape, advising viewers to cut the strawberries in pieces that are bite-size. She also uses a machine to inflate balloons for a balloon arch and assembles a child’s gift bag filled with such kid-friendly items as basil seeds and mini gardening tools. “It gives them something to do on the car ride home,” Meghan explains. These are exactly the items that I would not want my unsupervised three-year-old to have in the backseat of a car on the way home from a party.

After watching With Love, Meghan in its entirety, I’ve concluded that the Kaling name correction clip was left in because the people who made the show do not like Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

There are so many moments featuring her seeming uncomfortable, or awkward, or her not being confident about doing basic tasks in the kitchen, like shredding poached chicken breasts with two forks, or cooking crepes (LOW HEAT?).

In the pilot episode, Meghan visits her bee hutches with the help of a professional beekeeper and appears to be afraid of her own bees. The team behind the show makes scant effort to make it seem believable that Meghan eats much of the food that she prepares. She doesn’t give her preserves an ice bath once they’ve been canned– something many seasoned canners would note is a big faux pas. The preserves, which are for sale by the way, feature prominently in many of the desserts Meghan barely pretends to eat.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex pours Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzels into a different, smaller bag (Netflix)

I do not know the truth about Meghan and spiciness. In one episode, celebrity chef Roy Choi playfully argues with Meghan about the spiciness of a banana pepper from “her” garden (some of the scenes were filmed in Meghan’s actual garden and home; most were not). Meghan warned Choi that the pepper was spicy. Choi took a bite and had a fourth wall breaking moment where he stage whispered “It’s not spicy!” to the camera crew.

But! In subsequent episodes, there are several clips of Meghan serving her guests foods that she says are spicy, and the guests agreeing that the food is definitely spicy, and that Meghan enjoys spicy food. “I have a very high tolerance for spicy. And I love it. I crave it,” says Meghan in one subsequent episode. She didn’t even eat the Korean Fried Chicken! Fact check!

Another recurring theme of With Love is Meghan Has Friends. Even though she seems that she barely knows or is just meeting many of her guests, and some of the guests don’t particularly like her. The show gives the impression that Meghan spends her time alone in a kitchen that shows no signs that children have ever entered it, an unfortunate effect of shooting the show in a rental. But every episode featuring somebody she actually knows displays pictoral proof that the have, at some point in the past, hung out. As though the show is presenting evidence to a judge in Friendship Court.

Girl, I get it. When people come over to my house and I feel like I need to suddenly have conversations with them, I feel awkward as hell. I can’t imagine how much stranger it would be if I had to have conversations with near-strangers as we prepared food that I did not know how to prepare while cameras capture all of it. I just know that if I were to invite somebody over to my house for, say, a brunch of rubbery crepes a food stylist helped me make, I would also feel awkward. When I plan a party, the first thought that goes through my head is that I might not have any real friends. That’s why I don’t plan parties!

I particularly enjoyed the scenes in which Meghan pours something from one container into a different container. In the first episode, she pours bath salts from one container into another container, because she’s pretending that she’s about to have an old friend stay overnight at her house. In another episode, she pours Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzels into smaller plastic bags and ties them with a beige ribbon, because she’s pretending to provide a nice little touch for guests. Millennials are getting the Sandra Lee we’ve earned.

I can relate to this. I had a get-together a few months ago that consisted of me opening bags from Trader Joe’s and putting various salty snacks into various bowls, next to a cutting board covered in an array of cheeses and meats. I felt like a cheater, but now I see that I am actually about as ambitious as an estranged member of the Royal Family.

I also relate to Meghan accidentally insulting people. In one episode, she makes some special creamer in preparation for her friend Vicky to come over. While she’s making the creamer she somehow finds a way to shade Vicky a little bit:

“Vicky loves coffee. And she likes it with a very sweet creamer. So I thought it would be nice to make the creamer. [...] When I go to Vicky’s house and she offers me a cup of coffee, which I normally say no to because it’s not typically my thing, if I do say yes she goes ‘Oh, do you want a little creamer in it? I love it. It’s great!’ And I always have a sip and go “WHOA! This is sweet!” So, I’m going to try to match what she enjoys, and condensed milk will do that because it does have quite a sweetness.”

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, makes foccacia with a very tall Argentinian (Netflix)

Reminds me of how this morning I texted my dear friend Molly that Amy Lou Wood’s character from this season of White Lotus reminded me of her. I meant it in the nicest possible way– when we were in college together, Molly always had a way of making everything feel fun, even when we were clomping along Eddy St slush in Aldo platform boots and road salt-stained black Express Editor Pants because there were no cabs out and about at 3 am on a random Wednesday in February. “Isn’t she kind of vapid?” Molly responded. And then I didn’t hear from her for like a day.

“My bacon brings all the boys to the yard,” Meghan says with an embarrassed reluctance during an early episode. That is exactly the sort of dumb thing I’d say if a bunch of people were standing around watching me cook things. I’ve never said anything brings all the boys to the yard in my life, but the presence of cameras and the pressure of filling the air with some kind of sound would bring it out of me. I just know it.

Later, Vicky tells Meghan the story of the recipe that the two of them are about to cook together. As Vicky explains the touching significance of the paper (as a child, she’d written down the dumpling recipe from memory, folded it up, and stored it in this cookbook!) Meghan is more interested in flipping through the cookbook rather than paying attention to the touching story behind it. And that made the final cut!

I can’t tell if I love With Love or if I hate it, or if all of my feelings about the show are externalized feelings about myself. If that’s what the show is doing, bravo, team. That’s some deep stuff. (Seeing that it currently has a 2.9 rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m not sure that many people have the same relationship with With Love that I do. Although some of that abysmal rating I’m chalking up to whatever army of bots the Royal Family’s PR machine has contracted.)

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex with bees. (Netflix)

What I actually, unironically love about With Love is that, for as annoying it is for Netflix to back up a dump truck of money for a lifestyle show hosted by a woman who doesn’t seem to know or care much about entertaining beyond its potential as a business opportunity, With Love unintentionally showcases how not all women are wired to be hostesses and homemakers. Even in a sparkling clean, well-stocked, AirBnB kitchen, or on a backyard terrace that overlooks the mountains, or with an entire crew to make sure the countertops are pristine and the sink is never full of dishes, entertaining is still draining work. Even with somebody else watching your kids, food stylists on hand, and the ability to have mistakes whisked away in seconds rather than cleaned up with a bucket of hot water and a rag made from an old tee shirt. Even with all that, some days end beneath a sagging balloon arch, boredly explaining to a person you only kind of know from online how the party might look if kids were running around.

With Love also highlights how hosting is actually hard. It is a specialized skill. It’s okay to not have it, but people who are good at it– those who actually make it look fun and effortless– have a wonderful gift. Some people are naturally good at entertaining, some people can get better if the work at it, and some people, like me, are already eyeing their chipped platters to figure out which one would make the best home for a fruit rainbow at the first birthday party I don’t want to plan.