Martha vs Meghan

Martha Stewart and Meghan Markle as domestic goddesses, OCD & BPD with Scorpions by Tuppence Middleton and The Way She Feels by Courtney Cook, + stickers

Sad

The Way She Feels by Courtney Cook and Scorpions by Tuppence Middleton

I went on a mental health deep-dive this month, reading Scorpions by actor Tuppence Middleton about her life with OCD and then immediately after read The Way She Feels by graphic artist Courtney Cook on her BPD (borderline personality disorder). Scorpions I had been drawn to because I wondered if it would reflect my own experiences with OCD, and Tuppence Middleton was in my fave limited series of all time, War & Peace, so I had an idea of who she was. Courtney Cook I didn’t know, but I always love a graphic novel style memoir, and having had a few difficult and ultimately unsuccessful friendships in my life with people who I suspect might have BPD, I wondered if this would help me understand what they were going through.

Scorpions is beautifully and evocatively written, Middleton has come up with the perfect metaphor for what it feels like to be at the whim of scuttling, poisonous intrusive thoughts, which she names her ‘scorpions’. She's also quite darkly humorous, a hallmark of any mental illness long hauler. The book is short and often written in punchy scenes which illustrate her illness at work, such as melting down when someone vomits on a plane for fear of getting sick. Her writing makes you feel like you’re there, suffocating with her through a trigger. For me, this was meaningful in feeling less alone with the kind of thoughts and habits that have plagued me throughout my life. I’ve never seen more exact yet compassionate representation of living with OCD than in Scorpions. Middleton’s OCD began in childhood and she only very avoidantly dabbled in therapy (Middleton was convinced a therapist would make her lick her hands after putting them in a public toilet to get over her fear of norovirus), without ever really revealing the truth of her scorpion infestation. I began praying half way through the book that she would get on meds. I was relieved when she finally did try SSRIs but then the book takes what I felt was a rather unfortunate cultural turn.

Middleton is British and the British aversion to asking for and receiving mental health care is quite evident here. Finding massive relief from SSRIs, she’s then encouraged by her therapist to get off meds and she begins to refer to them as a ‘crutch’, which disappointed me. I’m not her doctor, I don’t know what is best for her medically, but there is so much stigma around mental health care in the UK, that I really wished she hadn’t treated SSRIs like something to be ashamed of. I also wish the book didn’t end with her deciding to stiff upper lip it instead of take appropriate medication for an ongoing illness. She closes the book by relaying the struggles she faces when her infant daughter becomes ill. I wanted to give her a hug and tell her there is no need for her to grind in this way, that it is ok to accept help through modern medicine and simply not suffer. It isn’t a crutch, it’s a gift.

The Way She Feels by graphic artist Courtney Cook is a combination of comics and essays looking at her history of BPD. Cook discusses the stigma around BPD, even within the medical community—that it is considered treatment resistant and she’s struggled to find a therapist who will work with her. She is always looking for aspects of herself that feel genuine to her, though she also acknowledges her illness is too deeply braided into who she is as a person for her to ever have a sense of who she is without it. My favourite section of the book is when she goes as a teenager to residential treatment in Utah for several months to a centre that works specially with girls who have BPD. I could sense the peace of this place, of everyone labouring under the same weight, trying to carve out space for hope, for lives that weren’t crushed by what they have to carry.

One thing I really appreciated was how plain spoken Cook is about BPD and all it’s attendant issues, she does not try to dress anything up or hide anything here, particularly impressive considering Cook was only 25 when the book was released. Living with this debilitating disorder turns every moment into an addictive hunt for personhood and love which can never be sated. I think The Way She Feels is a considered and sensitive entry point for anyone wanting to learn more about BPD. A warning however, there are many graphic depictions of extreme self harm, that go beyond just cutting into other areas, such as trichotillomania.

One thing these two books had in common was that both Cook and Middleton ascribe their mental illness not to abuse or fractured childhoods but to medical trauma they both experienced as children. For Middleton it was being sick with myalgic encephalomyelitis for a year as a child, and for Cook it was being born with her skull crushed in places by forceps. Cook had several surgeries as an infant during a time when it was thought that babies do not have pain receptors until they are 9 months of age and so went under the knife without any form of painkiller or anaesthesia. Of course memoir is a slippery genre and these women’s thoughts about their childhoods and families may change over time, but I thought it was interesting to note.

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Famous

Poster for Martha documentary and still from With Love, Meghan

While watching Meghan Markle’s new lifestyle/cooking show With Love, Meghan on Netflix a word came swimming back to me from the depths of the 2010’s and that word was ‘adorkable’. I wondered if the out of date ‘adorkable’ was analogous to the contemporary ‘pick me’, a term which is less generous, but nods to the clueless kind of tryhardness strongly evident in With Love, Meghan. There is a lot about Meghan and her new show that seems lost in time, unable to root itself in any kind of contemporary awareness—from the boomer friendly doo-wop music to the Tuesday Morning chic fonts and styling. It felt like it had been tumbled in blandness until every possible edge was worn smooth. It was like something you’d put on in a nursing home living room for background noise.

I used to root for Meghan, until sometime after the self commissioned Oprah interview/her and Harry’s tell all book/Harry’s tell all book/Netflix documentary series came out and I reached a ‘the lady doth protest too much’ saturation point (the lady and the lord in this case). However, she seems to be such a lightning rod for extreme opinions, love or hate, with very little space for any nuance or middle ground that when looking at her for this newsletter I wanted to see if I could find a way to talk about her that straddled a less volatile perspective. Meghan’s vocal supporters feel that, because of her race, she isn’t given the same leeway or grace someone like Martha Stewart is, so I wanted to look at Martha as well.

I am not a fan of Meghan Markle or of Martha Stewart. I am not into cooking, I don’t like lifestyle shows or crafting. I have not purchased anything either of them make. I won’t paint myself as neutral here but in terms of pure disinterest in their chosen areas of expertise, I am leaning that way. I am going to call her Meghan Markle, or Meghan, (tho I am aware she prefers Meghan Sussex) for the same reason we all still call Kate Middleton, Kate Middleton and not Catherine Wales or whatever. It’s cultural shorthand.

I read quite a lot of essays criticising With Love, Meghan and many that were, interestingly enough, not praising the show so much as they were bristling against its critics. I’m not going to link to any of the essays I read because I’m not looking to fight with anybody about their Meghan feels. The exception being this essay by Tara Schuster which I felt offered Meghan herself leeway and support while very rightly criticising whoever her team is. It was one of the closest essays I found to neutral in perspective (I have also wondered WTH anyone who professionally works with her is doing).

The pro-Meghan camp (PM) can be summarised as believing Meghan is a beautiful cinnamon roll simply too pure for this world, and that anyone who dislikes her or anything she makes for any reason is racist. The anti-Meghan camp (AM) thinks Meghan is an ungrateful, manipulative, delusional narcissist perma-victim. These extremes in perception, when coupled with actually watching her show, made me realise that when people look at Meghan they see whatever they want to see— good or bad— and wholly ignore anything that doesn’t gel with the narrative they’ve already given her.

One example of this is a newsletter by a PM nutritionist I like, where she discussed at length how spotlessly food neutral Meghan was in With Love. Oh cool, I thought. I was surprised then, watching the show after reading her newsletter, to see Meghan constantly contrast the food she grew up with (microwave dinners, fast food) with the food she is currently making from her own garden, clearly creating a good/bad dichotomy. Her first guest on the show makes several fat jokes which rail-thin Meghan smiles through blithely. The final episode’s guest, Alice Waters, pioneer of the California farm-to-table movement, talks at length about the importance of cooking with “real food.” Then she and Meghan, two rich ladies on a palatial estate with beehives somewhere in Montecito, chat about how crucial it is everyone has a garden because it’s like “printing your own money” and that everyone should just go ahead “plant something anywhere” (tell me how babe). Another PM essay I read I agreed with at first as the author declared ‘so what she’s corny, let her be corny’— fair enough. But they went on to insist she be allowed to do anything she wants without criticism, including produce bad content. For the PM’s out there Meghan is beyond reproach and there is an insistence upon her innocence and that any critic of hers is allergic to Black joy.

The AM camp is equally guilty of painting on Meghan that which is not really there. In particular I would say, heaping on her all the decisions she and her husband made jointly, as if Harry is some sort of Pinocchio. There’s a real racism/misogyny combo at play seeing her as a (literal) Black widow figure who ensnared Harry and planned all along to make them leave the royals so she could create a media empire or something. What?

How some AMs come off

These same critics paradoxically insist that Meghan’s an idiot. As evidence, they point at at With Love, Meghan, insisting no one is watching it. The show wasn’t well reviewed, but it was reviewed widely, became undeniably popular and was immediately renewed for a second season (like it or lump it, no one can get enough of royals). I also don’t know how anyone could look at what Meghan has gone through with her father and half siblings (all of whom I’d argue are mentally ill people who are being exploited) and not feel compassion for her. Her family makes money off trashing her in the media and they were immediately slagging off With Love, Meghan as soon as it came out saying everything she relays about her childhood in the show was a lie. Why would anyone take anything these people say seriously? But many AMs do.

I think what is missing from the With Love, Meghan analysis is a discussion of where we are at as a culture. One of the PMs arguments is that people love Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow of Goop, but hate Meghan, because she’s rich and Black instead of rich and white. But…do people love Martha Stewart? Or Gwyneth? I would argue pretty strongly that, especially if we throw Marie Kondo on this list, all of these women who put themselves out there as lifestyle gurus with perfect, enviable lives they can grant you access to if you learn how to do things their way, are objects of fascination, envy and vitriol across the board. And that hatred equals views/clicks/purchases as much as loving adoration does. With Stewart in particular, it is a partial case of timing and a partial case of where she is at in the love-hate-redemption cycle that famous women are endlessly churned through.

Martha Stewart is a famously hard to work with, not-likeable perfectionist who was America’s first female billionaire. The 2024 documentary about her on Netflix, Martha, was instructive as to how deep inside her own reality she lives. The word ‘sociopath’ came to mind more than once while watching. The favourite of six impoverished children, Martha endured extensive abuse from her father and clearly carried on many of his teachings. Her daughter, Alexis, briefly appears in the doc to say that her childhood was not happy and many interviewees say Martha was not cut out for motherhood.

What she was cut out for was ambition. After renovating a farmhouse in Connecticut, Martha began a catering company which was incredibly successful, then came a book deal and so on. She was a trailblazer in this area, the model upon whom all the other “domestic goddess” models, be it Goop or Meghan Markle, are based. Stewart was also coming up in the 80s and 90s, when America was arguably at its zenith and there was still a sense of fortune and possibility to be had for all. I’m not sure how much anyone really liked Stewart; she was never warm, never trying to make friends as much as she was including her audience in her circle, telling them how to achieve her perfect life.

But she was also hated the entire time. People wanted badly to see her fail, hated her for being rich, beautiful, unrelatable, rejoiced when she went to prison for insider trading, for her perfection facade to crack. Martha tries to paint her as some kind of feminist martyr for her imprisonment, which idk if I agree with, but I do remember the ‘off with her head’ kind of glee that accompanied her downfall. That was over twenty years ago now. And what we love to do with female celebrities is push them to crash and burn, then pick them up, dust them off and say ‘oh was she really that bad?’ or ‘oh, she’s kind of funny after all’. It’s the final part of the cycle Martha is enjoying now. I don’t think so much that people love Martha as they see her as redeemed and forgiven, put out to pasture.

However, there is an authenticity to Martha, openly a bitch, who everyone knows terrorises her employees, which Meghan lacks. Not that what Martha does is ok, but there is less unease in watching someone who is being their genuine self than there is watching someone desperate to control how they are perceived. I think Meghan suffers from the same problem her AMs and PMs do— she wants to paint her preferred narrative on herself. It struck me more than once as I watched her try to wrangle the shapeless With Love, Meghan that she wants to come off like a fairy tale princess, Thumbelina just birthed from a tulip. But rich or not, this is a 43 year old divorced mother of two. I know a few of those and adorkable, they ain’t. It’s hard to buy. I often sensed an unease with her guests and crew, that they were on high alert around her, that she might easily become fractured or undone.

Meghan’s attempt at lifestyle influence is not without precedence. In her past, when she was on Suits, she ran a lifestyle blog called The Tig. Like Stewart, she’s ambitious, a doer, clearly interested in aesthetic pleasures. She also seemed eager to get back to this iteration of herself after leaving working royal life. All good! However, I think another point of conflict is hanging on tooth and nail to ‘the dutchess’ of it all. Why insist in the credits as being listed as ‘Meghan, Dutchess of Sussex’ when you have loudly decried the British royals as a toxic institution you want nothing to do with? It doesn’t make sense. There’s a having your cake and eating it too and insisting upon telling everyone it’s fine for you to eat the cake and they should also eat the cake that I find draining about Meghan’s public persona. In one of the many comment sections I scanned when reading essays about With Love, Meghan someone made the brilliant suggestion Meghan do a show touring her fave spots in LA or around California, both places that so obviously light her up, rather than try and make ‘fetch’ happen with this lifestyle thing.

Particularly in the year of our lord 2025. This is another major contrast to Martha Stewart’s heyday. Nobody is hopeful anymore. Nobody believes making a beeswax candle is going to con anyone into thinking they have access to resources, that they are not drowning in debt, illness, disenfranchisement, climate stress. Just as Martha Stewart was lifted by the plenty of the 80s and 90s, With Love, Meghan is slamming straight into the have-not of it all. The timing could honestly not be worse or more out of touch. I appreciate she delayed the premiere because of the California wildfires but the whole thing should have probably been shelved. People spending $10 on a carton of eggs don’t want to see your bowl of beautiful multicoloured eggs, lovely as it may be that they came from your rescued chickens. The privilege on display here is pretty unreal and class analysis is one thing I think the PMs who insist all criticism of Megan is racist are missing. The only time I saw class mentioned was by one PM who said criticism of With Love, Meghan was classist toward Meghan lol. People who are oppressed in one way are not excused from being shitty in other ways.

Where I come down on Meghan Markle is where I have also come down on Blake Lively. I find Blake Lively unbearably smug and irritating AND it is not ok for her to be sexually harassed at work. Both things can be true. I don’t have to like someone and the things they make to also believe that it isn’t ok for them to experience injustice. I find Meghan Markle humble braggy and twee AND it’s not ok that people are racist towards her and that her family abuses her for financial gain. Some criticism toward her and her show is based in racism. But I don’t think overall that disliking With Love, Meghan is an injustice toward Meghan. It’s just kind of a shitty show released at the worst possible time.

Where I come down on Martha Stewart is I still don’t like her and am not especially interested in her : )

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STICKERS!

I just realised I didn’t send out a newsletter in March because I was busy being a sticker boss. I must be feeling entrepreneurial lately because I recently opened a sticker shop with my good friend

Kate Horowitz

! This was born from many, many years of us saying we should start a sticker store for depressed people so others can share in our hilarious suicide jokes. And finally we were like, screw it, let’s just try it out. So if you’re in the market for high quality stickers (we tested a number of sticker vendors until we found really nice ones) that will make you chuckle bleakly through your tears, check out Big Challenges!!! Our spring ‘25 collection is out! We ship worldwide. Here’s a few we have up atm—

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More News from Me

I will be a contributing editor for the exciting new Substack literary mag, Zona Motel. I will be writing about book aesthetics and my column will be called ‘The Book-Object’. It launches on April 7th. Zona Motel is a really cool venture with so many talented writers pitching in and a real punk rock ethos that is very much needed right now. Please subscribe!

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