Tag: Meghan Markle

Nigeria’s first lady, Oluremi Tinubu, expressed support for Meghan Markle following online allegations that she criticized the Duchess’ fashion selections during a recent visit to Nigeria.

Tinubu garnered attention after a video of her speech addressing challenges confronting Nigeria’s youth emerged online, with a statement emphasizing cultural norms.

“They are all beautiful girls, but they should be confident to know they are. They don’t want to be like… even they are mimicking and trying to emulate film stars from America.

“They don’t know where they come from. Why did Meghan come here looking for Africa? That is something we have to take home with. We know who we are and don’t lose who you are,” Tinubu added.

Some interpreted this as the first lady indirectly referencing Meghan, suggesting that her mention of “nakedness” criticized the duchess’ attire for the visit. Social media posts on the remarks went viral and garnered mainstream media coverage.

Yet, the first lady’s office has released a statement supporting Meghan and refuting what they view as a misleading interpretation. Newsweek reached out to representatives of Meghan Markle and Oluremi Tinubu’s office for comment via email.

“She meant Meghan appreciates the people we are and hence her coming here,” the first lady’s office told international news agency Agence France-Presse on May 30. “At no point did she say anything about Meghan’s dressing.”

The vote of confidence from the first lady’s office comes as Meghan and Prince Harry were generally well received during their three-day visit to Nigeria between May 10 and 12.

The couple were officially invited to visit the West African nation by General Christopher Musa, chief of defense staff, the country’s top-ranking military representative. Many of the events Meghan and Harry undertook during their stay were connected with Harry’s veterans sports tournament, the Invictus Games, which Nigeria participated in for the first time in 2023 and one day hopes to host.

Meghan had revealed on an episode of her Archetypes podcast that she discovered through a genealogy test that she is 43 percent Nigerian and thanked Nigerians for “welcoming me home” during her stay in the country.

The couple’s visit raised eyebrows in Britain as it closely mirrored official tours undertaken by members of the royal family on behalf of the monarchy and U.K. government. When Harry and Meghan split from the monarchy in 2020 and stepped down from their roles as working royals, they relinquished their responsibilities to undertake these tours.

The couple’s Nigeria visit, though officially invited and organized by the chief of defense staff, was made in a private capacity as philanthropists and Harry as patron and founder of the Invictus Games, not as members of the royal family.

Meghan’s wardrobe during the visit won praise from the fashion press. However, critics online said that the duchess’ bare-shouldered looks were incongruous with the modest form of dressing adopted by a large percentage of the country’s estimated 50 percent Muslim population.

Though widely considered a successful visit, Harry and Meghan’s Nigeria visit was hit with scandal when it was revealed the couple had used the commercial airline Air Peace for internal travel between the cities of Abuja and Lagos.

Allen Onyema, Air Peace chief executive and founder, is currently wanted in the U.S. on a fraud indictment from 2019.

While it is unclear whether Harry and Meghan were aware of this at the time, commentators have noted that this is a mistake that they cannot afford to repeat if they are to continue making international visits.

A judge in Florida threw out a case against Meghan Markle, saying that the actress did not make mean and untrue statements about her half-sister.

Samantha, who is Markle’s half-sister, said that Markle’s comments in a Netflix show and an interview with Oprah Winfrey made it seem like Samantha is trying to become famous and is not honest about her intentions.

The lawsuit was about Markle saying that she and Samantha were not close growing up and that Samantha changed her last name to Markle when the royal couple started dating.

US District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell in Florida found that the statements in question were either opinions, mostly true, or did not harm Samantha.

Meghan Markle and Harry are called The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. They are part of King Charles’ family. They and their two kids have been living in California since they stopped being royal in 2020.

Their famous separation from the rest of Britain’s royal family has been in newspapers all over the world for years, and it made the British government take away Harry’s automatic police protection when he was in Britain.

In the 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey mentioned in Samantha Markle’s complaint, the couple said the royal family was racist, didn’t care about them, and had fights within their own family. When Winfrey asked Markle about her half-sister’s book that was supposed to reveal everything about her, Markle said it’s difficult to reveal everything about someone you don’t know well.

49 million people around the world watched when they were on Winfrey’s show, according to US network CBS. Their popularity in Britain went down a lot and it caused a big crisis for the monarchy that has been around for 1,000 years.

The Duchess of Sussex has revealed she had a miscarriage in July, writing in an article of feeling “an almost unbearable grief”.

“I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second,” Meghan said in a piece for the New York Times.

She went on to describe how she watched “my husband’s heart break as he tried to hold the shattered pieces of mine”.

Meghan wrote that “loss and pain have plagued every one of us in 2020”.

The 39-year-old shared her experience to urge people to “commit to asking others, ‘are you OK?’” over the Thanksgiving holiday in the US.

A source close to the duchess confirmed to the BBC that the duchess is currently in good health and the couple wanted to talk about what happened in July, having come to appreciate how common miscarriage is.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “It’s a deeply personal matter we would not comment on.”

The duchess and Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, moved to California to live away from the media spotlight, after stepping back as senior royals in January.

Their first child, Archie, was born on 6 May 2019.

The duchess began her article by describing a “sharp cramp” she felt while looking after Archie.

“I dropped to the floor with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful tune a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right,” she wrote.

“Hours later, I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand. I felt the clamminess of his palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears.

“Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes glazed over. I tried to imagine how we’d heal.

“Meghan made it clear from the first event that she spoke at as Harry’s bride-to-be that she wanted women’s voices and women’s experiences to be heard more clearly.

Now she has written of her loss, and her heartbreak. She has set it in the context of a year of breathtaking turbulence. And she has made a plea for tolerance and compassion.

She weaves in the struggles of so many with Covid-19, the battles over truth and lies in our divided age, the killing of black Americans by the police.

And on an experience that so many women have lived through, she has made her grief a way of bringing miscarriage closer to the everyday conversation.

The duchess continued: “Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few.

“In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage.

“Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.

“Some have bravely shared their stories; they have opened the door, knowing that when one person speaks truth, it gives license for all of us to do the same.”

The duchess also referenced a TV interview in which she was asked by a journalist if she was ok, during her tour of South Africa last year.

She said she was asked the question during a time in which she was “trying to keep a brave face in the very public eye”.

“I answered him honestly, not knowing that what I said would resonate with so many – new moms and older ones, and anyone who had, in their own way, been silently suffering,” she said.

The duchess is the second member of the Royal Family to open up about having a miscarriage.

In 2018 the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Tindall spoke about suffering two miscarriages before having her second child.

The duchess’s miscarriage happened at a time when she was involved in legal action against the Mail on Sunday over the publication of a letter she wrote to her father. Last month she was granted a postponement of her privacy trial until autumn next year.

‘Breaking down stigma’

An estimated one in four pregnancies ends in a miscarriage, according to the charity Tommy’s.

Tommy’s midwife Sophie King said talking about baby loss in pregnancy is “a real taboo in society” so “mothers like Meghan sharing their stories is a vital step in breaking down that stigma and shame”.

She said the duchess’s “honesty and openness” sends a “powerful message to anyone who loses a baby: this may feel incredibly lonely, but you are not alone”.

Clea Harmer, chief executive of stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands, said it was a “sad reality” there was a stigma surrounding pregnancy loss and baby death, which “leaves many parents feeling isolated”.

“The isolation we have all felt this year has made it even more difficult for parents whose baby has died during the Covid-19 pandemic and has brought back painful emotions for all those who have lost precious loved ones,” she said.

Dr Christine Ekechi, of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said it was “important” that any stigma or shame surrounding this issue was removed.

“Sadly, early miscarriages are very common and they can be a devastating loss for parents and their families,” she said.

And Alice Weeden, from charity the Miscarriage Association, told the BBC: “When somebody, particularly in the public eye, talks about it openly, it’s helpful for other people to know that they are not alone.”

Source: BBC