Good on Meghan and Harry for letting the curtain fall on the royal birth media circus | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
The duke and duchess’s decision to keep the birth private is a modernising, feminist act that will incense the tabloids
News, if you could call it that, that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Prince Harry will not reveal the location of or plans surrounding the birth of their first child. This will no doubt frustrate the swarms of paparazzi accustomed to camping out outside the Lindo wing of St Mary’s hospital in anticipation of the now familiar sight of Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, groomed, trussed up and probably still bleeding in a pair of high heels, performing the whole Simba routine to the nation. The strangeness of the sight has never been lost on women; last year, when Prince Louis was born, women took to social media to share snaps of how they looked after giving birth: ecstatic, yes, but also exhausted, dazed, clammy, reeling. Trauma aside, these postnatal photos end up resembling a kind of freedom when put side-by-side with the stage-managed spectacle of the duchess.
Some of the press coverage of Meghan’s pregnancy has been appalling, tinged with sexism and racism