A story from Meghan Markle's childhood has resurfaced proving that she's always been one to campaign for change.
The actress-turned-royal shared the revelation on her podcast, Archetypes, detailing her decision to champion for change as a young girl.
At just 11 years old, Meghan took it upon herself to call out a sexist television advert for using harmful and unnecessarily gendered language. The now-41-year-old revealed the tale of her ambitious girlhood antics on the first episode of her podcast, which is part of a lucrative multi-year partnership with Spotify.
The Duchess of Sussex retold being "furious" as she discovered a Procter and Gamble commercial for dish soap in the 1990s, the product was advertised solely to women, which even an 11-year-old could deduce was problematic.
In 2022, Meghan described the discovery on her podcast: "When I was 11 years old I saw a commercial that changed the way that I saw my place in the world. Let me be clear, it wasn't because this ad was some kind of ingenious piece of marketing.
More on this incredible tale below:"Actually, it was just the opposite. I was in the sixth grade, I was in my classroom and we were watching TV when a commercial came on," she said.
The slogan for Ivory Dishwashing Liquid used in the ad was, "women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans”.
A young Meghan took action against the use of the word 'women' and wrote several impactful letters illustrating the negative effect that the female-centered campaign could have by perpetuating gender stereotypes.
Not only did she send the passionate statement to the soap’s manufacturer (the aforementioned Procter and Gamble), but to civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred, First Lady of the time Hillary Clinton, and Nick News anchor Linda Ellerbee!
The latter of which led to a feature on the Nickelodeon channel that shows the young force talking about her decision to take on the sexist commercial.
In the 1993 interview, Markle made statements wise beyond her years: "I don’t think it’s right for children to grow up thinking these things, that just mom does everything.
"It's always mom does this and mom does that," a precocious Meghan said to the camera, "And I said, 'Wait a minute how could somebody say that?'"
Due to her actions, the dish soap advert eventually changed its tagline to a more politically correct version, they took Meghan's direct suggestion and swapped out the word "women" for "people".
The 41-year-old described watching the sexist ad as a defining moment and went on to compare speaking up on issues as a child to having a platform as an adult.
She called the experience an "awakening to the millions of ways, big and small, that our society tries to box women in, to hold women back, to tell women who and what they should and can be.
"I've never lost touch with that reality, and in the last few years, my desire to do something about it has grown. My 11-year-old voice has also gotten a little more confident – maybe a little louder," she poignantly said during the episode.
It seems her early foray into feminism was the perfect note to start the podcast on as the series aims to "investigate the labels that try to hold women back," – a mission Markle has apparently been on for over 30 years now.
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