Thank goodness for Meghan Markle. She has given us something other than farcical politics and the cost-of-living crisis to talk about.
In the latest episode of her Archetypes podcast, she talks to heiress and reality TV star Paris Hilton about being labelled a bimbo or a dumb blonde.
During the conversation, Meghan looks back on her own career and picks out the time she worked as a “briefcase girl” on the US version of Deal or No Deal.
She complained how, despite having studied international relations in college and working as an intern at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she was valued for her brain, on Deal or No Deal she would feel valued for something quite the opposite.
She explained that the girls were even given spray-tan vouchers “because there was a very cookie-cutter idea of precisely what we should look like... it was solely about our beauty”.
Meghan said she was grateful for the job which paid her bills but “not for how it made me feel, which was not smart”. She said it “reduced her to this specific archetype, the word bimbo”.
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As a fellow feminist, I’m really not sure what she was trying to say. Having married a multimillionaire prince, with all the trappings that brings, her message comes across as quite patronising.
Now she has reached a very privileged position, it’s not at all helpful for the duchess to look back on her life and say she was hard done by. Sometimes you have to take a job to get to the next level.
My attitude to work has always been that it’s an opportunity to be spotted to get to the place I ultimately want to be. If that ever meant I had to spend more time on my personal appearance, then I have done just that.
I have used clothes, hair and make-up on top of my skills, talent and education to offer the complete package. I never felt like a bimbo because I was always in control of my decisions and choices. No one can make you feel anything you don’t want to feel.
I have two degrees – a Bachelors and a Masters – but when I started working in sales, it was right at the bottom.
I remember being in an East London warehouse counting biscuits and crisps for the company I was working for – it was cold, dark and dingy and I admit to wondering: “Is this what my education has brought me?” But I stuck at it, getting to know how the cash and carry worked, who the buyers were, who my competition was, the importance of merchandising, marketing, promotion and customer relations.
Without doing that job every day for a year, I would not have been promoted. You have to roll up your sleeves, swallow your pride and get the job done to show your peers that you’ve got the stamina, resilience and work ethic to succeed.
It’s not about what you’re wearing, it’s what you do with any opportunity that comes your way. Make the most of them.
