Looks like celebrities are skin and bone and ~feelings~ just like the rest of us pleb mortals. Surprising, isn’t it?
Meghan Markle – you know, the Suits actress, writer, editor of her own damn site (oh and casually dating Prince Harry) has jotted down a strong AF essay for Elle UK about the shit she has to wade through while being a woman of colour.
One of the most notable things from this, is how Meghan explains the casual racism that has surrounded her entire existence transferred itself into the online sphere.
Going from questions of ‘what are you?’ when being introduced to people in real life, to having people tweet ‘ew, she’s black?’ when the family of her character – Rachel Zane – was introduced on Suits, Meghan has continually run the gauntlet of underlying racism in both online and offline world.
“At the end of season two, the producers went a step further and cast the role of Rachel’s father as a dark-skinned African-American man, played by the brilliant Wendell Pierce. I remember the tweets when that first episode of the Zane family aired, they ran the gamut from: ‘Why would they make her dad black? She’s not black’ to ‘Ew, she’s black? I used to think she was hot.’ The latter was blocked and reported.”“The reaction was unexpected, but speaks of the undercurrent of racism that is so prevalent, especially within America.”
Online bullying is absolutely non-discriminatory. It doesn’t matter how much money, or corgis, or golden toilets you have, people will find something they don’t agree with and, under the cloak of a username and anonymity, drag you into a fresh hell.
Meghan notes that she’s previously blocked and deleted people on Twitter that have been less than desirable, and fair enough. She’s only human. She’s just like you and me, and if there’s an option to just blanket ignore all the people that wanna give you their two cents on your existence then fuck ’em, do it.
A mantra has surrounded the way Meghan has conducted her life, and she explains it was a moment from when she was young and was asked in school to define her ethnicity – and there was no ‘bi-racial’ option to tick. She left it blank, and her dad gave her some sage words for next time.
“When I went home that night, I told my dad what had happened. He said the words that have always stayed with me: ‘If that happens again, you draw your own box.’”
Draw your own box. It’s beautiful and succinct and advice we should be following ourselves. Not everyone fits in a tightly-constructed and constrictive box, and they have to draw their own.
Even though Meghan is successful and has banked herself the most eligible bachelor in probably the whole universe, she is just like the rest of us. Realistically, all famous people are.
“While my mixed heritage may have created a grey area surrounding my self-identification, keeping me with a foot on both sides of the fence, I have come to embrace that. To say who I am, to share where I’m from, to voice my pride in being a strong, confident mixed-race woman.”“That when asked to choose my ethnicity in a questionnaire as in my seventh grade class, or these days to check ‘Other’, I simply say: ‘Sorry, world, this is not Lost and I am not one of The Others. I am enough exactly as I am.’”
She has struggled with her identity, dealt with undercurrents of othering and hatred, and has learned to draw her own box.
Source: Elle UK.
Photo: NBC.
Photo: NBC.
