Meghan Markle's healthy lifestyle in the media: Multiracial exceptionalism and the cult of slimness

Abstract

This paper examines how media representations of Meghan Markle's healthy lifestyle perpetuate concepts of good femininity rooted in racialized norms. Simone de Beauvoir's concept of ‘cultural myths of femininity’ and Patricia Hill Collins's theory of ‘controlling images’ offer a framework for analyzing how mainstream health and lifestyle media promote and normalize white, bourgeois ideals of femininity. A study of 20 articles published in American and British magazines or on their websites reveals how lifestyle and health media extoll Markle as an example of a healthy and prosperous woman, thereby presenting her as what Ralina Joseph calls an ‘exceptional multiracial’. These articles promote a cult of slimness entrenched in a racist opposition between slender white women and fat Black women. ‘Multiracial exceptionalism’ further exacerbates the implicit racism in these texts.