Royal experts and critics take aim at Meghan Markle over Archetypes podcast

The latest episode of Meghan Markle’s Spotify podcast has been criticized by critics after the royal family revealed she was quitting as a Deal or No Deal briefcase girl because she was ‘objectified’ and forced to spray and wear a padded bra that held her back. reduced to a ‘bimbo’.

The Duchess of Sussex spoke on her Archetypes podcast, in a new episode released yesterday titled ‘Breaking down the bimbo’ which also featured Paris Hilton.

Meghan appeared on season two of NBC’s Deal or No Deal 16 years ago. She first stood next to case number 11 for two episodes and then went to number 24. She left the show halfway through the season.

She said, “I ended up quitting the show. I was so much more than what was objectified on stage. I didn’t like feeling compelled to just be outwardly. And little content. And that’s how it felt for me at the time to be reduced to this specific archetype, the word bimbo.’

The California-based royal also revealed that she and the other women on the show were forced to queue for various beauty treatments, including “padding in your bra,” attaching fake lashes, and “inserting” hair extensions.

But reviewers and critics have focused on Meghan’s claims. Royal biographer Angela Levin told MailOnline that the very attractive “Meghan” “didn’t have to take the job” and “could have said no,” adding that the fact that she chose “meaned she wanted it.”

Rikki Schlott in the New York Post said that “being praised for your looks” was “literally the job description” on the show, adding that no briefcase girl “came up expecting to be celebrated for her brains.”

Hilary Rose wrote a sarcastic review in The Times noting how listeners had learned that “envy can be a dangerous thing”, adding that this may have been especially true “when you feel like living in a castle, but instead a poxy cottage called Frogmore’ – a reference to the living situation of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex when they were based in the UK.

US commentator Kat Timpf said Meghan spoke as if she was “describing a very serious trauma she had experienced,” even though she simply opened “a briefcase.” She added that briefcase girls are “paid to look attractive” and would have known that when they applied.

Richard Madeley on Good Morning Britain asked: ‘Is there anything Meghan Markle won’t whine about’, before highlighting how Claudia Jordan, the Duchess of Sussex’s Deal or No Deal counterpart, had refuted her claims.

And Spectator World’s Cockburn columnist said ‘we’re used to Meghan’s attempts to rewrite history’, before asking if it was an ‘ongoing theme’ for the royal family to ‘run away from a job because not every aspect of it is suits her.”

Read excerpts from some reviews of the latest episode of Archetypes here:

Angela Levin – MailOnline

• It’s extraordinary. First of all, Meghan is very old fashioned. The word bimbo has long been out of normal speech. So I really don’t understand why she goes back to the days when women were treated in a very different way.

• She must have auditioned for it. I think she was not known at all then and someone would run after her and beg her. She was obviously going to audition, saw what it was, and if she didn’t like it, she shouldn’t have done it.

• I think when we all go out to earn money and work, after school and any other education, you don’t start at the top, sometimes you start with something that is rather banal and not very stimulating. But you realize it puts you on a ladder to more that you want to do and gives you experience.

• But why did she want to experience wearing the kind of clothes she did, which were kinda bimboesque and took that job… she did 34 performances of it so if she hated it and thought it was very disrespectful then she could have leave.

• There were many beautiful girls there and she could have just kept going. This whole thing about she didn’t want to be praised for her beauty, she’d rather be praised for her brains, the point is that’s bullshit too, because it puts herself back in a position she doesn’t want to be in if she’s really smart. is, doesn’t have to be at all.

Rikki Schlott – New York Post

Meghan Markle used her looks to get ahead – now she’s shocked she’s ‘objectified’

• ‘While the look of scantily clad twenty-somethings behind Howie Mandel may be a bit grumpy by today’s standards, you have been praised for your appearance . . . well, literally the job description. I don’t think a suitcase girl showed up expecting to be celebrated for her brains.

• ‘Markle, who was on the show’ [Deal Or No Deal in 2006, chose to capitalize on her beauty and flaunt what she’s got —and, hey, more power to her. A pretty face was her foot in the door.’

• ‘That all makes it a little hard to sympathize with the implication that she was somehow victimized as a briefcase girl, a job she as a then 25-year-old consenting adult chose to take.’

Hilary Rose – The Times

When Meghan met Paris Hilton: I was wrong, she is a genius 

• ‘She is a genius and a rare journalistic talent and, now that I too am sitting in my truth and owning my dimensionality as a multilayered human being, I can see it.’

• ‘Meghan gives the usual long preamble about herself. This week, it’s about how cursed she was to be born beautiful, and how unexpected and awful it was to feel valued for her looks, not her brain, when she was hired by a game show for her looks, not her brain.’

• ‘We learn that envy can be a dangerous thing, perhaps especially when you fancy living in a castle but get given a poxy cottage called Frogmore instead, and have to walk behind other people instead of being right at the front, like you deserve.’

US commentator Kat Timpf – Piers Morgan uncensored 

• ‘The way she talks about this as if she is describing some really serious trauma that she went through. She opened a briefcase and that is all she had to do. You are paid to look attractive. That is what the job is. You know when you sign up.

• ‘To say that she was forced to do it, no you agreed to take the job. To me this makes about as much sense as accepting a job at Subway and saying it is sexist when a man asks you to make him a sandwich.

• ‘That is what you are paid to do. And plenty of women who do that job, they are grateful for it, they like it, they are fine with it, so if that is what you want to do, choose to do it… but it is not a trauma.’  

Richard Madeley – Good Morning Britain 

• ‘Is there anything Meghan Markle won’t moan about? She’s saying that the show, which she did in 2006, made her look like a bimbo and objectified her.

• ‘And her co-bimbo who worked on the show – not! She has come out and said, ‘Excuse me, I wasn’t treated like a bimbo and neither were you actually, we weren’t objectified’.

Cockburn column – Spectator World 

Meghan Markle’s meeting of the minds with Paris Hilton 

• ”I am kind, I have a big heart, I’m an Aquarius. I love animals and I’m shy. I’m a tomboy. I’m an undercover nerd. I love cartoons and I’m a girl’s girl,’ says Paris Hilton at the start of Archetypes, Meghan Markle’s podcast about ‘dissecting labels’. 

• ‘We are used to Meghan’s attempts to rewrite history, but now it seems that her guests are falling victim to their own ‘truth.’

• ‘Cockburn wonders if this is a running theme in Meghan’s life, walking out on a job because not every aspect of it suits her. Well, at least this time, with the help of Spotify, she won’t need to worry about paying the bills.’