The Millennial-ness of Meghan Markle's Instagram
On June 4—the day of her daughter Lilibet's fourth birthday—Meghan Markle posted three different Instagrams. Yes, three. The first was a slideshow that included two heavily filtered black and white photographs of the Duchess holding her daughter. One seemed to have been taken fairly recently; the other just after she was born. The second was a slideshow of a sepia-toned photo of Prince Harry with Lilibet as an infant, followed by video of Harry and a toddler Lilibet walking in Montecito. And the third?
Well, that's going to take a new paragraph.
It's a video. Taken in a hospital room. For the first few seconds Meghan, heavily pregnant, stands awkwardly looking at a camera. Then music begins to play: Starrkeisha's 'The Baby Momma Dance.' She begins to move to the music, at one point, dropping it low. Prince Harry eventually comes into frame, waving his arms. 'Four years ago today, this also happened. Both of our children were a week past their due dates… so when spicy food, all that walking, and acupuncture didn't work—there was only one thing left to do!' Meghan captioned the video.
If you visit certain corners of the internet or read certain papers, you'll find yourself amongst a populus convinced that Meghan Markle is some sort of manipulative, narcissistic mastermind. ('She wanted to be the victim because then she could convince Harry that it was an unbearable experience and they had no choice but to move to America,' an anonymous source told The Times of London. 'She marches around like a dictator in high heels, fuming and barking orders. I've watched her reduce grown men to tears,' another anonymous source told The Hollywood Reporter.)
I'm not a psychiatrist. So I'll refrain from weighing on what personality traits Markle does, or does not, have. Nor have I ever met Meghan. So I'll also refrain from commenting on what she is, or is not, like.
But I won't refrain from this: Markle's Instagram presence makes her seem so... harmlessly millennial.
Everything has a filter. (She loves a black-and-white photo). Captions contain the crying laughing emoji. (Gen Z prefers the skull.) She posts mood boards with cheesy sayings that seem plucked from Pinterest: 'You cannot make everybody happy. You are not a jar of Nutella,' or 'I love you with all my butt. I would say heart, but my butt is bigger.' There are also video slideshows and random photos with text overlaid. ('My husband's hat gets a twirl,' reads a red caption over a photo of Prince Harry's cowboy hat from Kemo Sabe.)
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