Even royalty has suffered through embarrassing moments.
Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle recalled a “humbling” moment when she was a teen, discussing visits to Korean spas with her mother, Doria Ragland, on her “Archetypes” podcast.
“It’s a very humbling experience for a girl going through puberty because you enter a room with women from ages nine to maybe 90, all walking around naked and waiting to get a body scrub on one of these tables that are all lined up in a row,” Meghan, 41, explained in the podcast, adding all she wanted “was a bathing suit.”
“Once I was over that adolescent embarrassment, my mom and I, we would go upstairs we would sit in a room and we would have a steaming bowl of the most delicious noodles.”
The episode’s release Tuesday morning marks the end of a four week break for the royal’s Spotify podcast, which was put on pause following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8.
Meghan was joined by journalist Lisa Ling and comedian Margaret Cho on the podcast, where they discussed the lack of Asian representation in the media.
Cho, 53, spoke of the “Dragon Lady” trope, saying it constantly affects Asian and Asian-American women.
“Because we can’t just be beautiful. We have to have, like it has to come at a cost and it’s kind of like, evil queen-adjacent. But it’s also so pinned to this idea that Asian-ness is an inherent threat,” the actress and comedian said on the podcast.
Cho said she never saw Asian people on the TV shows and movies she watched, admitting it made her feel invisible at times.
“I never felt seen anywhere. And then later, I guess, I started to go into silent films, and I started to realize, ‘Oh, this is actually like an archetype, this archetype of the Dragon Lady,'” she continued.
CNN host Ling, 49, said she pursued broadcast journalism due to the lack of Asian representation online.
“Growing up, it’s the only path that I thought was available to me. I was someone who grew up in a broken home,” she explained. “My parents were divorced when I was 7, and the television was always on in my home. It was like my favorite babysitter. And I used to have these fantasies of being part of it somehow, because I thought, if I can get on TV, maybe I will have a better life one day. But no one looked remotely like me on TV except for Connie Chung.”
The Duchess also spoke of her love for learning about other cultures, and said she “loved” growing up in Los Angeles and being exposed to different cultures, which was what initially lead her and her mom to start visiting Korean spas.
“[LA] is full of culture that you could see, feel, hear and taste on a daily basis,” she said, adding that she had had a “real love” of getting to know other cultures.
“My weekends were spent in Little Tokyo, or having iced teas in Thai Town, or sitting with my friend Christina Wong and her parents at a local Chinese restaurant,” she recalled. “I remember this so vividly and them teaching me why chow fun with dry noodles was so much better than chow fun with wet noodles.”
Meghan admitted she wasn’t aware of the stereotypes Asian women faced until many years later.
“This has seeped into a lot of our entertainment,” she said. “But this toxic stereotyping of women of Asian descent, it doesn’t just end once the credits roll.”
