Where competency fails,
one's vanity prevails.
re Meghan Markle
What kind of woman, who considers herself ambitious, does not understand that to be an ambitious woman is a frown-able offense? I know, a woman who is not actually all that ambitious.
Fact. Every little girl who is even remotely ambitious-adjacent understands that this is a bad thing. You know how she knows this? Well, quite frankly, because everyone around her calls her "Bossy," not a Bad Ass Boss ... Boss-y ... as if the girl is attempting to be a Bad Ass Boss, but this is unacceptable, and so, she is the devalued, feminized version with the -y added to it, which means it's "Girl-y." And to be "girly" is inherently valueless, except when in the case when that girl has a womb, then that womb is the property of the man who buys her, with a pet rock or a dowry; it's all the same. But I digress.
My point is that Meghan Markle is not ambitious, not intellectually or in any way that threatens society at large. This is why she never knew that being an ambitious female was seen as unbecoming. Also, I feel like it's fairly well known that intelligent, outspoken women of history were put to death for their intellect. The women who were just social problems within gossip spheres posed no real threat until people started to listen to them, which was rarely, unless you wanted to be put to death. Thus, one assumes that it is not really her "ambition" (which I am generally requiring to be that of an intellectual nature, which I entirely understand to be unfair) that rubs people the wrong way.
Being a social climber is ambitious. I'll give her that, but it's not the kind of ambition that creates an archetype out of a woman, except, I guess it does cause the Golddigger to exist, etc., but the archetype that Markle seemingly attempts to outline about the "ambitious woman" is one that is seemingly lost on her.
Obviously, I didn't listen to the podcast episode because I do not listen to podcasts, nor do I support the streaming service of her podcast. I did, however, get a general understanding of the general aspects of the episode, and honestly, I only care in a very general sense. What I know is that the episode does not educate people on how to deal with embodying this "distasteful" archetype of the "ambitious female," etc. An episode to this effect would be something that I'd consider, helpful, feminist, educating. Instead, the episode seemed to focus on Markle's own experience of being labelled an "ambitious woman," which, as I've outlined, she is not. Sure, she's become ambitious, but this is not the same thing as being ambitious.
A label is not an archetype.
Historically, woman and ambition do not go hand-in-hand, and I can't seem to wrap my mind around the fact that Markle supposedly did not know this until entering a royal family. And thus, I do not believe her, which means that I do not trust her, which means that everything she says seems like a lie. She supposedly has a college degree. And she's a feminist. There are just too many examples like this wherein she cannot claim to have "not known," because it means that she's stupid.
And then I take a deep breath and remind myself that I only ever come across Markle in the entertainment section of my newsfeed(s), where she belongs, with Joe Rogan and Kim Kardashian.
We don't scrutinize the latter because Rogan is a self-proclaimed idiot, and Kardashian only invites scrutiny of her vanity, cause, let's be serious, in this instance, brains and beauty have not coalesced, not that they can't coalesce, in fact, I'd argue that more often than not, the beauties among us are also well-endowed of mind; it's all symmetry.
We scrutinize Markle because she proclaims to do good. She's a do-gooder, and we do not accept do-gooders who are not good doers. Take Ellen DeGeneres for example. Thus, Markle welcomes the scrutiny because she wants to be the ultimate good doer. And what's the problem, here? I don't understand why everyone has such a problem with Markle not only wanting and thus pursuing what she wants but also, that she invites scrutiny because she outright proclaims that she intends to do good.
This is why Markle is impossible to tolerate. It's the thing that everyone refuses to say out loud. Markle is behaving like a White woman, because she is one, but she looks not-white. Thus, she's inherently a fraud.
So sure, do I wish that Markle were everything that I want her to be? Of course. Am I upset that she's not doing more? Yea, duh. But do I understand the life that she's chosen to live? Absolutely. It's not a life that I would wish upon anyone, but at the end of the day, she's doing it, she's continuing to put herself out there in the name of do-goodery. According to them (the Sussexes, as a unit), their intentions are good. To us, their intentions could be anything. In the end, nobody's opinion of them affects them on a day-to-day, personal level. They're going out there trying their best to make as much money as possible so that they can maintain their social status as rich people who, thusly, ought to influence us on what to buy and how to think. "Doing Good" is merely their brand. Don't get it twisted.
They were never any different from the Kardashians and the Rogans of the world. They just seemed as if they were, but so far, they've been largely unable to launch their "intellectual" properties out of the entertainment tab.
Finally, as an aside, I read that she shared some horrifying story about how the space heater in her son's makeshift nursery caught on fire, while he was not in the room. The incident shook her so much that she was then upset by the obligation she had to attend after being so shaken by her son being unharmed. This is some seriously whaack white-woman entitlement, here. But, I guess she is the one who married the prince of a historically racist, elitist, entitled, genocidal family, for fuck's sake. If that doesn't show you everything you need to know about how White she is, I don't know what will. Like seriously. If I were allowed to take time off from my obligations every time something almost happened, I'd never go anywhere, nor would I get anything done. If I were shook by the mere possibility that something terrible, almost might-could've happened, how would I live my life?
Everyone talks about the historically hideous nature of the one-drop fallacy, wherein one drop of Black would "ruin" the whiteness of White, but what about its reverse? What about that one drop of White ruining Every Person, Place and/or Thing. If Markle could be less myopic and speak to the archetypes from a larger vantage point that includes more than just herself, it's possible that she might be able to overcome her whiteness.
re Joe Biden
Leave it to a bunch of white elitists to forgive $10K of student loan debt that was taken on by a bunch of ... white elitists.
The argument, I guess, is that it's an amount that will help basically no one. If you're making $80-125K and you can't afford to pay back your student loans, it's not because your loans are forcing you to pay too much. It's because a) your expenses are too high and b) you're an idiot. If you're making less than $80K and you can't afford your loans, it's because you don't know how to adjust your payments to match your income. The Dems are so out of touch that they don't even know that there are student loan borrowers who do not even make $50K. This "bailout" is not supposed to bring relief to those who are simply over-spending idiots. This relief is supposed to (in my book) forgive loans to those who graduated from college and entered the workforce to an employment market with zero opportunity for them. Those who are working hourly with a college degree, perhaps even two degrees.
For these student loan borrowers, $10K is not enough. But how could you possibly know that if you assume that everyone who graduated from college has some $125K+ salary. And, like I said, if you are one of those who graduated, make over a measly $80K and still cannot afford your student loans, you're the idiot.
re Annie Leibovitz
I mean, it's more than possible that Leibovitz has never been any good at photographing people. Being white in white America helps to make the incompetent whites seem less so (and don't fucking come at me about how white Jews aren't white).
*don't come at me about how racist this is. I know how racist this is. I was raised by two white people. I know what Overcoming Whiteness means.