Meghan Markle believes calling a woman “difficult” is “a code word for the B-word” — and revealed she has a “visceral reaction” when hearing the word.
The 41-year-old royal said in the latest episode of her “Archetypes” podcast — titled “To ‘B’ or not to ‘B’ ” — that the label of “bitch” tends to be given to a “specific type of woman.”
“What these people are implying when they use that very charged word is that this woman, oh, she’s difficult,” Markle said.
The Duchess of Sussex says the “B-word” is a label that’s constantly thrown around.
“Labeling a woman as a ‘B-word’ or as ‘difficult’ is often a deflection,” Markle said. “A way to hide some of her really awesome qualities, her persistence or strength or perseverance, her strong opinion, maybe even her resilience ,and those are the very qualities we’re going to be uncovering today.”
She added that calling someone the “B-word” or “difficult” is often someone else’s way to belittle and dismiss someone.
“Well isn’t that a convenient villain? An assertive woman in a position of power being called the B-word,” Markle said. “It becomes a way to take their power away and keep them in their place.”
She spoke to the author of “90s Bitch: Media, Culture and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality” Allison Yarrow about the origin of the word and how it came to be such a negative label.
“Etymologists believe that the word ‘bitch’ came out of this Greek insult that meant women were dogs in heat — begging for men — that was the idea,” Yarrow explained. “And there was a more modern definition that was written down in the 1890s and it was ‘bitch’ was an Appalachian — that was the worst name you could call an English woman, even worse than a whore.”
The two discussed the “bitchification” of women in headlines with a 24-hour news cycle, and Markle revealed that the “name-calling” is why the word elicits a reaction in her.
While Markle said her friends and women she admires are reclaiming the word by using phrases like “bad bitch” — but she herself hates the word so much it “gives her hives” and she has “zero interest in reclaiming this term.”
“For some women, it’s all about embracing and reclaiming the B-word, taking the power out of it, maybe even using comedy to defuse it. And for others, it’s standing in there knowing and being unaffected by the implication of the word or its cousin, ‘difficult,’ ” she said.
The royal shared that when she was discussing with her friends which archetypes she should discuss on the podcast, they all quickly told her: “The word you have to talk about is ‘difficult’ ” since the label gets thrown around so casually.
“My friend said to me, ‘There’s a certain point when you come to terms with the fact that not everyone is going to like you. The goal can’t be for everyone to like you, but the goal can be for them to respect you,’ ” she said.
This isn’t the first time Markle spoke about her dislike for the “difficult” label on the podcast.
She previously shut down her “Duchess Difficult” label — a nickname coined by the media after rumors of “dictatorial” behaviors in 2018 — on an episode about the “Angry Black Woman Myth.”
“You’re allowed to set a boundary, you’re allowed to be clear,” she stated in the previous episode. “That does not make you demanding, it does not make you difficult — it makes you clear.”
