Analyse af Meghan Markles essay 'I’m More Than An “Other”'

An Essay on “I’m More Than An “Other” by Meghan Markle.

In 1865 was slavery a normal thing. Since then much has changed, we moved past the colonialism, and exterminated the racism. Or have we? USA is known for “The American Dream.” Many years ago, many have traveled across the whole world to find peace and a place where they could live their life to the fullest with many opportunities. So how come, that even today, fifty years later women and man have to struggle with fitting into boxed made by society?

In “I’m More Than An “Other”” article written by Meghan Markle in 2015, and published by ELLE, a fashion magazine, the writer deals with some sensitive subjects like ethnicity, identity and life as a mixed-race woman. Meghan Markle starts with a question she often gets asked “What are you?” A question that isn’t referring to what we would think it would refer to. It’s not enough for Meghan to say, that she is an actress, a writer, the Editor-in-Chief of her lifestyle brand The Tig, a pretty good cook and a firm believer in handwritten notes, no. Because the question doesn’t come from pure curiosity on her, and her life. The question is asked because of the curiosity that comes from a much deeper and more sensitive place. The curiosity that comes because of her not so usual looks, that makes it hard for people to put her into a box in their head. She has curly dark hair, freckled face and pale skin. Her father is Caucasian, and her mother is African, and Meghan is therefore somewhere in between. She discusses the everyday problems, where she isn’t seen as just a person, but is put a place where she has to choose whether she is black, or white. And most of the time she is not “black enough” to be seen as a black woman, and not “white enough” to be seen as a white woman. Meghan talks about the grey area she stays in, and the way the society is trying to push her into one of the sides. In the beginning of the article she writes about her childhood, and the way her parents crafted a world around her to make her feel normal. On one Christmas morning she found her Heart Family she wanted so much: a black-mom doll, a white dad and a child in each color. Her father took the sets apart and put them together to customize their family, as Barbie dolls weren’t sold mixed. It was either white dolls, or Black dolls. But her parents could only protect her from the real world for so long. Fast-forward to the seventh grade, where she had to complete a mandatory census in her English class, she had to check one of the boxes to indicate ethnicity. The choices were in front of her – white, black, Hispanic or Asian. There she stood with a feeling that if she chooses one of them, it would be like choosing one parent over the other. Besides that, it also felt to Meghan like choosing one side of her over the other. And when she asked the teacher, he told her to check the box for Caucasian because that’s how she looked. From a really young age the society tried to put her into a box, and the more she tried to fight her way out of it, the more the society pushed. The words said by her father after she told him about the incident, stayed with her forever. “If that happens again, you draw your own box.” (s. 8, ll. 102-103.) As a result, Meghan decided to not give up and choose a side, but keep both of her sides, because that’s what made her her. But the society didn’t plan on giving up on her that easily. She decided to be an actress, but it didn’t take long to realize, that she didn’t check the boxes there either, on which she said, “It’s either ironic or apropos that in this world of not fitting in […] I would decide to become an actress.” (s.9, ll. 155-160.) “There couldn’t possibly be a more label-driven industry than acting, seeing a character breakdown: “Beautiful, sassy, Latina, 20’s”, “African American, urban, pretty, early 30’s”, “Caucasian, blonde, modern girl next door”.” (s. 9, ll. 160-166). However, that how she crafted her own voice. After many denials, because of the fact that she fitted into all the boxes - but in small portions - the series Suits stole her heart. In the series she got a role as Rachel Zane, one of the female leads and the dream girl – beautiful and confident with an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. A role that – according to Meghan – helped shift the way pop culture defines beauty, since it wasn’t the usual “[…] blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty” (s. 9, ll. 195-196.) But in spite of that, when in season two the producer decided to cast the role of Rachel’s father as a dark-skinned African American man, the society was back on the start line. Meghan mentions a few of the tweets that referred to that: ““Why would they make her dad black? She’s not black”, to “Ew, she’s black? I used to think she was hot.”” That paints a great picture of how important the boxes are to the society. However, that didn’t of course push Meghan away, but made her see how both sides of a culture she defines as her own become victims of spin in the media, the strongly marked society by stereotypes. On that Meghan said: “[…] the States has perhaps only placed bandages over the problems that have never healed at the root.” (s.10, ll. 236-238). Perhaps Meghan’s self-identification is keeping her with a foot on both sides of the fence, she has come to embrace that. The title of the article references to the series Lost, where the characters are The Others, and so Meghan writes near the end that she is not lost, and she is not one of The Others, that doesn’t fit in, and therefore she refuses to check “Other” when asked to choose her ethnicity. It is sad to think, that even after so many years of pursing equality and trying to minimalize the big hole that is put between the different races and skin colors, we are still not there. We call ourselves modern, modern society, and pretend that all the problems are gone.