Meghan Markle told her familiar foundation story about writing a letter complaining about a sexist dish soap commercial during her tour of Colombia over the weekend, but the much-mocked anecdote was not included in bulletins sent to global media by a journalist accompanying the tour.
While the Sussex’s global head of PR, Ashley Hanson, told The Daily Beast that the bulletins written by Bianca Betancourt, Digital Culture editor at Harper’s Bazaar, were “up to her discretion,” it was notable that the reports were, without exception, hugely flattering of the Sussexes. The glowing reports were distributed to global media by the Sussex PR team.
The omission of the fact that Meghan told the dish soap story, which has been widely ridiculed and discredited, will fuel the perception that the Sussexes, who have often said they support press freedom, were trying to micro-manage media coverage of the entire tour by hand-picking and accrediting just one journalist, who does not have a news background, for the tour.
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Indeed, Meghan’s use of the anecdote only emerged after the Daily Mail, an outlet with which the Sussexes have been locked in a series of costly and lengthy legal battles, many of which they have won, sent their own reporter, Nick Pisa, to cover the tour.
Betancourt’s account of Meghan’s words ran as follows: “I’m very very fortunate at a young age I was able to feel as though my voice was being heard and that’s a luxury that a lot of young girls and women aren’t often afforded,” she said. “For us and the work we do with Archewell ...”
Pisa’s account quoted Meghan saying: “I was very, very fortunate at a young age to feel as though my voice was being heard,” she said, “And I think that is a luxury that a lot of young girls and women aren’t often afforded.
“I was 11-years-old, and you may know this story, I had seen a commercial that I felt was sexist, and I wrote a letter, several letters, about it, and the commercial was changed. When you’re 11-years-old, and you realise very quickly that your small voice can have a very large impact, I think it creates the framework to feel empowered to use your voice, because you know you’re being listened to. It doesn’t ever feel good to use your voice and no one hears you. That’s not ideal.
“So for us and the work that we do with our Archewell Foundation…”
Meghan’s story about writing the letter to Procter & Gamble (P&G) at the age of 11 once formed a prominent part of her narrative about her early activism.
She told the story repeatedly in public forums, recounting how, as a young girl, she was upset by a P&G commercial that stated, “Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.” After writing a letter to the company and receiving support from high-profile figures like Hillary Clinton, Meghan claimed, the company changed the commercial’s wording from “women” to “people.”
The journalist Tom Bower, in his book, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors, claimed that Vanity Fair initially included this story in a profile of Meghan but removed it after fact-checkers were unable to verify its accuracy.
Bower suggests that advertising historians and P&G could not confirm that Meghan’s letter was the direct cause of the commercial change, casting doubt on her version of events.
Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle, who has fallen out with his daughter, has also questioned Meghan’s characterization of the story.
In an interview with Good Morning Britain in March 2021 Thomas confirmed that Meghan did write the letter but said: “It was all part of a social studies class in school, and they were all writing letters,” and in a 2020 documentary, Thomas Markle: My Story, he said: “I think Meghan was part of a letter-writing campaign of sorts. The story about her single-handedly changing the ad may have been a little embellished.”
While it was clear Meghan got involved in the campaign—she even appeared on a local news channel at the time—it is also clear that the extent and effect of her actions may have been exaggerated in her many re-tellings of the story.
Betancourt told The Daily Beast she had chosen not to include Meghan’s remarks the letter because it was old news, saying: “My story was written with the Bazaar reader in mind and I was simply highlighting new information that they’d be the most interested by.” She added, “We don’t and never have included every single statement said at any type of event we cover.”
