Irony envelopes the lives of so many of our teens and young adults, but particularly women.
Emboldened by the likes of Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins, they are gutsy in putting forward their views – but will shy away from making their own doctor’s appointments.
They’ll study long into the night for months to receive an ATAR rank they know won’t matter in a year. They’ll express anxiety about their economic future, but seek purpose over dollars at every turn.
Their inclusivity is awesome – but they will quickly cancel those public figures who espouse a viewpoint different to their own. And awesomely accepting of each other, they are simply brutal in self-judgment.
But still, with their male peers, they are shaping democracy in a bigger way than they might ever at a ballot box.
The influencer market was worth $14 billion last year, and they understand the role of social media more intuitively than their parents. Those trending hashtags can magnify social medial campaigns and bring about real change.
Enter Megan Markle, the maligned princess who can’t put a stilettoed foot right. At least to strident monarchists and traditionalists and royalists and historians and most others, over the age of 50.
But here’s the thing: doesn’t this point to an irony in our own lives; in how we – as adults – are parenting and educating our own children, particularly teen girls?
We tell them to speak up and take the seat at the table they’ve deserved for a long time. To not sit back and wait for opportunity to find them. To be heard. And when they do, as the American actor-turned-princess does, we howl her down.
We don’t like her challenging tradition. Or speaking out of turn. Thinking she is equal to royal family members born into castle life. Encouraging the media. Cherishing a loving partnership over century-old expectations. We don’t even like that she has a history.
Of course, context is everything. We loved her in the drama series Suits.
There we saw her as sassy and clever, opinionated and articulate, and we would be proud if our children aspired to be the real-life version of Meghan’s on-screen character.
But exiting the screen and entering into royal life, we want someone to fit our old, tired expectations of the monarchy; and perhaps this is part of the reason why so many young adults support a republic.
Meghan is not a shy 19-year-old looking for a fairytale. She’s had that. She’s a confident and articulate woman who wants a place in leading other young women. And more power to her.
One senior school principal tells her female students that if they go into a position of power and use it to do nothing, there will be no pushback.
But if they use their power to challenge and change and question – and create division – there will be the equivalent of what she terms an “internet pile-on’’.
That’s what we are seeing with the Duchess of Sussex. An ill-thought-out television interview has become a bigger sin than a long and tawdry list of scandals involving most others born into royalty.
Tanya Gold, writing in The Spectator last year, said the precise objections to Meghan were “all stylistic’’, and simply un-British.
“It is insinuated that she is self-seeking, when she is merely ambitious – and why not,’’ she wrote. “Her charm and her striving brought her a long way until they crashed into the impossible demands of British royalty and their mad acolytes.’’
The palace is largely at fault here. Palace sources. Those close to Prince William. Inside Buckingham Palace. A castle of leaks waged against a woman who simply fell in love with her own Prince Charming. And refused to stay quiet.
Cancel culture is actively silencing too many important viewpoints. Indeed, Australian research recently found that 65 per cent of people reported they self-censored when sharing their opinions.
And more than half of us hide our views on topical issues because we fear how people might respond.
Megan is living her life, the way she sees fit. She’s creating a family home and business and life with a prince and partner, who saw his own mother vilified in the same way.
She’s not breaking the law. Plotting a palace coup. Having an affair. Posting naked selfies. Being drunk and disorderly. Stealing from the local Walmart.
She’s just using a pubic profile she had long before her marriage to a prince with a healthy confidence and admirable articulation to be heard.
And that’s what every expert in the world will tell us we should be doing with our own young women.
