Meghan Sussex’s distorted performance reviews
The same kinds of distorted and problematic language that show up in popular culture also show up in your workplace.
This is why I often write about current events as they’re happening. The years I’ve spent analyzing data on workplace behavior can be directly applied to controversial things happening in politics or dominating social media.
This month, let’s take a look at the vitriol and distorted feedback surrounding Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (née Markle) and her new Netflix show, With Love, Meghan.
The show’s goals are modest — the official Netflix blurb reads: “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, invites friends and famous guests to a beautiful California estate, where she shares cooking, gardening, and hosting tips.”
No attempts to be groundbreaking. Instead, it follows in the tradition of television hosts like Martha Stewart, B. Smith, Sandra Lee, Rachel Ray, and Ree Drummond, not all of them amazing chefs. The most unusual feature is Sussex openly conversing with the director and featuring him and various set crew on camera rather than keeping them behind the scenes.
The other unusual feature is that the host is a member of the British Royal Family (if only by marriage).
Sussex ran a popular lifestyle blog, The Tig, from 2014-2017. The blog covered food, travel, and wellness, and is seen as an early influencer platform (similar to Goop, but more budget friendly and without a product line). The Tig was shut down in 2017, about 9 months after Sussex and her now husband began dating.
Combined with her seven years starring in the television show Suits, her 2.5 million followers on Instagram, and the well-known “Meghan Effect,” where things she wears sell out instantly, Sussex has the bona fides and reach to justify an 8-episode streaming show on cooking and lifestyle tips.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2018 (via Wikimedia Commons)
But even before its release, With Love, Meghan was attacked by critics, both paid and unpaid (as in randos on social media). And since its March 4 release, the criticism has been non-stop — with some negative reviews of the show published suspiciously quickly. A tiny sample:
“Meghan Markle has never figured out a convincing persona”
“Narcissism, pure self-indulgence”
“Cringe”
“She’s so fake. And hasn’t an original idea in her over inflated mind!”
“Unrelatable lavish lifestyle series”
“Pretentious”
“Out of touch”
“Unaffordable”
“Who exactly is supposed to be her audience?”
“Wildly unattainable… and mind-bogglingly basic.”
Commenters have spoken angrily about her Le Creuset cookware and suggest that everything Sussex cooks and presents is overly expensive.
I’ve only watched 4 episodes, but so far, I have seen:
A $20 balloon pump for DIY balloon arches
A honey lemon cake made with basic supermarket ingredients
A one-pan pasta with spaghetti and basic vegetables
A frittata with goat cheese and basic vegetables
Children’s tea sandwiches made with supermarket sliced bread, peanut butter and jelly, and cream cheese with cucumber
Sun tea made with filtered water, a jar, and a tea bag filled with herbal tea ingredients
A fruit plate made with supermarket fruits arranged like a rainbow
Cheap cotton hand towels soaked in lavender water and used to cool off
I was genuinely surprised at how easy and budget-friendly so many of these recipes turned out to be.
What’s more, my social media (especially Threads) has been filled to the brim with people posting about how soothing and inspirational they found the show, along with photos and videos of them trying out the recipes for themselves and learning with delight that their air fryers are also dehydrators.
Black women in particular are talking about their love of a “soft life” — flower arranging, gardening, beautiful tablescapes, long dinner parties with with friends, high quality cookware (often bought on sale), and more. One posted,
“As a former daytime talk show producer, Meghan’s show is EXACTLY what a lifestyle show is supposed to be. Informative, relatable, aesthetically beautiful, and aspirational. If it doesn’t work for you, don’t watch it. But her show speaks to this Black woman who buys fresh flowers every week, cooks from scratch, believes in farm to table, makes her own cleaning products, and believes in elevating her life and those around her.”
Collage of Threads posts inspired by With Love, Meghan
So how does this all relate to language in the workplace?
We can think of the criticisms of With Love, Meghan as performance reviews.
And they fall into the same suboptimal pattern of many performance reviews of women at work:
“Inflating language” that presents reasonable behavior as unacceptable
Vague generalizations that focus on personality and self-presentation instead of actionable advice that will actually help someone improve
Inflating Language
In comments and reviews, Sussex was relentlessly criticized for being unrelatable and unaffordable. But while her home, friends, and the house used as the show’s set may be unaffordable and unreachable, the ingredients, skill level, and cooking times were actually all attainable and reasonable.
Inflating language is applied to people from lower-status or stigmatized groups. And it shows up all the time in workplace performance reviews. Most frequently, in performance reviews of women. And especially in performance reviews of women of color, who belong to two stigmatized groups simultaneously.
Mean. Abrasive. Aggressive. Unlikeable. Intimidating. Rude. Too sure of yourself. Overconfident. Unladylike. Loud. Disruptive. Angry. Too much attitude. Scary.
These are just a subset of the inflating language I’ve found in feedback and reviews of women at work.
Personality over actionable feedback
Study after study has revealed measurable differences in feedback given to women and men at work.*
For example, a recent study by Textio showed that 88% of high-performing women were critiqued on personalities in their performance reviews.
A Harvard Law School study showed that women were 1.4 times more likely to receive critical subjective feedback (as opposed to either positive feedback or critical objective feedback).
A Stanford study showed that women were being hampered by vague feedback at work. By contrast, the men in the study were “offered a clearer picture of what they are doing well and more-specific guidance of what is needed to get to the next level.”
And in her TEDx talk (with more than 4 million views), Susan Colantuono lays out the ways that women are denied feedback on the skills and competencies they need to develop to move up in leadership — in particular, specific business, strategic, and financial acumen. By contrast, men were given actionable feedback on how they could develop for all of these.
All of these studies show that women are receiving lower quality (and inappropriately negative) feedback that often suggests that they should focus on their personality traits and self presentation. They also demonstrate that women are consistently being denied useful and actionable feedback that will actually help them in their careers.
I’m no television expert, but offhand I can think of at least five ways that With Love, Meghan could be improved. Including production and direction changes, information presentation, and format. And if put in a focus group, I’d gladly share detailed notes.
But this kind of critical feedback, granular and specific, is rarely found in reviews of the show. Instead, we find the same patterns as the regular performance reviews for women at work – a focus on personality, and criticisms of things that other people get a pass for.
To sum it all up:
Some people get mad when Black women have nice things and are successful. And feel the need to put them down, either publicly (in articles or social media comments) or privately (with inflating language and bad performance reviews at work).
This doesn’t mean that women of color shouldn’t be given critical feedback. Constructive feedback is a gift! It just means that the critical feedback shouldn’t be subjective, shouldn’t focus on personality traits, should be as granular and specific as possible, and be as actionable and future-focused as possible.
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*I haven’t found studies that include non-binary people, but my data shows that it is perception of gender that matters, not actual gender. So really, it’s feedback to people perceived as women and people perceived as men.
Author and international speaker Suzanne Wertheim is a prominent expert on language optimization. Worthwhile Research & Consulting guides organizations to more modern, accurate, and effective language.