Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee this year, battling it out with incumbent Donald Trump for the presidency. Americans will go to the polls in just two weeks after a tumultuous year that included nationwide protests against police brutality and the coronavirus pandemic, which has resulted in 220,000 deaths in the US. However, four years ago, the Democratic nominee was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who replied to Meghan when she wrote to her as a child.
At the time, Mrs Clinton was the First Lady, and so Meghan thought she would be a good person to contact about an advert that she believed to be sexist.
Meghan also wrote to iconic feminist Gloria Steinem, who she got to meet this year for an interview, and Nick News presenter Linda Ellerbee.
The advert was for a washing up liquid and contained the phrase: “Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.”
Meghan described to Larry King in 2016 how she had been frustrated by this, because boys in her class had started playing into the stereotype that women belong in the kitchen.
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Meghan Markle wrote to Hillary Clinton when she was 11 (Image: GETTY)
When she was 11, Meghan wrote to Hillary Clinton, who was First Lady at the time (Image: GETTY)
She said: “I was talking about an experience that I had when I was 11 years old and I went to school here locally in LA and it was during the LA riots actually, so 1993.
“And the class was very small and we were watching TV and this commercial came on for a soap manufacturer, Ivory dishwashing liquid.
“And in the tagline of the commercial it said ‘Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans’ and two of the boys in my class said, ‘Yeah that’s where women belong, in the kitchen’.
“And whatever it was in me at 11 years old, it sparked this frustration and this desire for change and I went home and I said to my dad, ‘This is crazy, I have to do something’ and he said ‘Why don’t you write some letters?’
Meghan Markle on Larry King Live (Image: YouTube (Larry King))
“So Larry, I wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton, who was our First Lady at the time, I wrote a letter to Linda Ellerbee, who hosted a show called Nick News W5, I wrote a letter to Gloria Allred and I wrote a letter to the soap manufacturer.
“And then everyone responded to me with the exception of the soap manufacturer, and what was so interesting was to then see that with this support behind me, they changed the commercial to ‘People all over America’.”
Meghan has been an outspoken advocate for both gender equality and racial equality for a number of years now.
She first told this story in a speech she gave at UN Women, where she held a position of Advocate for Women’s Political Participation and Leadership.
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Meghan Markle on Nick News when she was 12 (Image: YouTube (Marsellus Wallace))
When she married Prince Harry in 2018, she had to tone down her political opinions to fall in line with royal neutrality.
However, now she and Harry have stepped down as senior royals and moved to the US, she has started speaking out again.
Both the Duke and Duchess have been encouraging Americans to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
While they have not explicitly expressed their support for either one of the two main candidates, it is widely believed that they support Demcoratic nominee Mr Biden.
This is because Meghan has previously branded his rival Donald Trump a “misogynist” and “divisive”.
She also openly supported Mrs Clinton in 2016.
What’s more, Harry has a personal relationship with the former Vice President and Second Lady, who has attended the Invictus Games several times.
Meghan has specifically encouraged women to vote several times, including when she gave a speech via video link at the virtual couch party event held by When All Women Vote in August.
In her speech, she thanked Michelle Obama, one of the co-chairwomen of the scheme, before making a plea to female voters to make a “change” by going to the polls.
She said: “When I think about voting and why this is so exceptionally important for all of us, I would frame it as, we vote to honour those who came before us and to protect those who will come after us.
“Because that’s what community is all about and that’s specifically what this election is all about.
“We’re only 75 days away from election day and that is so very closer, and yet there’s so much work to be done in that amount of time, because we all know what’s at stake this year.”
— to www.express.co.uk
