Pick flowers, have boring cake
If you are a married Pakistani woman, there is a thousand per cent likelihood you will have hosted dinners and lunches at some point in your life, either under duress or otherwise. The time has come, however, to hang your head in shame, because if Meghan Markle's trailer for her trad-wife lifestyle show With Love, Meghan is anything to go by, you have been doing it all wrong. Let's review how you approach the impending arrival of guests so we can see just how you have sinned.
A Pakistani dinner party
You probably plan a menu and dig out the fancy crockery buried in the depths of your sideboard bestowed upon you at your wedding (which never sees the light of day otherwise). Your dream of blowing your guests' minds as you picture a table groaning under the weight of biryani that could be mistaken for Student Biryani, nihari that puts Javed (of Javed ki nihari) to shame, Bihari kabab to rival BBQ Tonight, and desi lasagna that would cause the Italians to weep in envy. Somehow, you also find the time to whip up jalebi and gajar ka halwa.
If you are not an evolved domestic goddess but are one of those women who tolerate forced guests, you may think that only someone with a death wish would trot out biryani, nihari, jalebi and gajar ka halwa on the same day. You would be sadly mistaken. Such hostesses exist and are a headache to visit. Social etiquette dictates that you invite them back to your house for dinner. You and the biryani-and-nihari-and-jalebi-loving hostess both know that this is a competition you are not going to win.
Meghan's version
But don't wallow for too long, because according to Meghan, the key to astonishing your guests lies not with backbreaking kitchen labour. Instead, it begins with flowers.
"I'm going to share some little tips and tricks. I see what colour I gravitate to, and everything goes from there," says Meghan as she takes a stroll through a lush flower garden the size of a football pitch. Quite what flowers and colours have to do with selecting a menu is not made explicitly clear in a trailer lasting 1 minute and 51 seconds. After Meghan's talk on flowers, however, we cut to a scene of her slicing into the most dessert in existence: a Victoria sponge. For those who are blissfully unaware, a Victoria sponge is a multi-tiered dry sponge cake stuck together with strawberry jam. Meghan's version is topped with strawberries and cream.
"This is probably one of the most glamorous moments of my life," gushes Meghan's guest and actor friend Mindy Kayling. Before we chastise Mindy for swooning over dry sponge cake and strawberries, the Guardian reminds us that Mindy, who has attended multiple Oscar parties and Met Galas, knows a thing or two about glamour. A Pakistani dinner hostess, who does not identify with this brand of glamour, would die of embarrassment at putting her guests through such mediocrity.
"We're not in pursuit of perfection," Meghan reminds us. "We're in pursuit of joy."
However, a Pakistani dinner hostess may not have been Meghan's target audience, so we perhaps should not be reaching for a pen to take notes – although if you married ladies are irritated at your other half for knowing less than zero about kitchen matters, you can at least take solace in the fact that Meghan's husband (at least from what we can glean from this trailer) also seems to avoid kitchen-related tasks. He may, of course, astonish us all when the actual show streams on Netflix on January 15.
Let the haters in
Whilst we may not be Meghan's target audience, it is not quite clear just who is. Someone with a large PR team at her behest must have clocked that a picture of beige quiet luxury, replete with kitchens the size of concert arenas, may not inspire joy in a public grappling with a cost-of-living crisis. Therefore, whilst Meghan may not have come under fire for serving a dessert that is less interesting than banana custard, she has, unsurprisingly, attracted the ire of her usual brand of online haters. They have not found a smidgeon of joy in her cooking tips.
"Due to the sight of MM and sound of her voice turning my stomach, I won't torture myself listening to or watching the trailer or show," writes a commenter, who, regardless of the sensitivity of their stomach, was still able to click on the trailer long enough to leave an opinion.
"Now the whole world is seeing what a joke/fake MM is," pens another similarly unimpressed follower.
Others were moved enough to comment over Meghan's hair ("Long ratty hair extensions look even worse handing over food"), her face ("Cheekbone implants + Ozempic = Cruella de Ville") and her overall demeanour ("Jumping up and down and clapping like a 12-year-old is not cute when you are in your mid-40s").
Getting nothing right
If Meghan's career trajectory post-marriage is anything to go by, her army of petty haters was born the moment she let Harry into her life. As soon as that romance began, it was only a matter of time before Meghan was forced to exit a show she loved (Suits), shut down her lifestyle blog, and remove any traces of individuality online.
If her fate was not sealed then, it was certainly sealed with extra strong super glue from the moment she and her husband waved goodbye to their royal lives and flew off into to sunset in 2020. (Or at least to Canada, followed by California). It was an action that resonated deeply with Pakistani women (at least the ones on women's Facebook groups), but not many others. Ever since then, whether it is publishing a children's book (The Bench), granting an audience to Oprah to give her side of the flying-off-into-the-sunset story, producing a Netflix documentary with her husband up with a documentary to do the same (Harry & Meghan), or even deciding to protect her children's privacy, the one thing that is certain is that her haters will find her like a moth to a flame.
Like the bahu in a Pakistani drama, Meghan continues to be vilified for yanking her husband away from his family. Today, she has given us a lifestyle show where the most outlandish thing she has done is serve truly dreadful dessert. Tomorrow, she could up the stakes and bake a cheesecake for every one of her haters and also personally install solar panels in their homes. But someone out there will still say "Remember that time she complained to Oprah?" or "Her hair extensions look so ratty." If the price for ditching royal in-laws is to be an eternal hate magnet, maybe it is acceptable if one finds comfort in a flower garden to plan a dinner menu. But espousing boring cake? That is unforgivable.