Even after years of covering the Duchess of Sussex in particular, I’m still surprised by which stories become multi-day faux-controversies. Like, remember when Meghan wore a red dress to a hospital fundraiser? The Daily Mail ranted about Meghan-in-a-red-dress for weeks, and they were still bringing it up months later. I’ve also been surprised to see just how insane the British press has been over Meghan’s scheduled appearance at a ladies’ retreat in Australia. Like, they are not taking that well at all and it’s been weeks of meltdowns.
Well, the latest multi-day nonsensical controversy is over Meghan posting a sweet Easter video of Archie and Lili running to find their Easter eggs. This video has gotten millions of views, and the British press has been obsessively documenting and analyzing every little thing about and around the video. The Mail seriously did a whole story about how Lili loves going barefoot, just like Meghan, and something something Americans/California/royal protocol! I don’t know, I didn’t read the full story. The larger issue is that the media doesn’t have on-demand access to Archie and Lili and they’re absolutely furious that they can’t simultaneously demand that Meghan show her children’s faces AND demand that Meghan delete her Instagram. Speaking of, here’s an excerpt from the Times’ latest column, “Is this photographic evidence that Meghan is a ‘posturing parent’?” For the love of god.
It used to be, until the 21st century, that bodies carried shame. If there was anything you were going to cover up, it would be a body. A face — unless you were a wanted criminal — was what made us most recognisably and nobly human.
Cut to the Instagram account of the Duchess of Sussex, who has posted two videos of her children in the past week, the first of her son skiing, shot from behind, the second of her children in Easter activities, faces carefully obscured from behind or the side.
… In 2026 the “emoji on child’s face”, or the lesser variant, “child always shot from behind”, trend is many things, and all of them are strange. Parents don’t have to choose between their children having an online or an offline childhood, they can instead broadcast endless “nape” shots of their child’s necks or slap a garish cartoon sticker on their face, done in the name of hypocrisy, or love.
Sierra Tishgart, a journalist, said in a TikTok rant that had nearly 400,000 views that the two crimes of the emoji mask are that it’s ugly and that it’s smug. “It’s visually heinous,” Tishgart argues. “I don’t want to see a heart emoji with legs. And it’s performative in the worst ways. You’re posturing parenting, while you’re also saying, ‘I’m above you, because I vaguely care about privacy.’”
Of course, it started with celebrities, the actress Kristen Bell among the first to plaster a big yellow happy face emoji across her daughter’s family photos, but soon followed by countless others, from Chris Pratt to Gigi Hadid and Blake Lively. Notable that they are all Hollywood royalty: privacy is here wielded as a luxury commodity. They are too rich, too classy and too high status to shill their kids’ faces across social media platforms like the Kardashians or the Beckhams, or us civilians who know a cute photo of any child is a magnet for likes on Facebook.
When I read this kind of sh-t, I always have two thoughts. One, why is it so important to see Archie and Lili’s faces, really? Be honest. Two, why would anyone be offended by Meghan and Harry wanting their kids to have some anonymity given their very real and well-documented security issues? Of course, I always think it’s so sweet whenever Meghan posts anything about her family life. She’s extremely proud of her husband and children, and she’s only sharing a small fraction of their life together.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, shared a sweet glimpse into her family’s Easter celebrations, with Archie, 6, and Lili, 4, enjoying a magical egg hunt in their expansive Montecito backyard. “Happy Easter!” Meghan wrote in the caption
#meghanmarkle #princeharry
: meghan pic.twitter.com/O4ueU7YOsq — HELLO! Canada (@HelloCanada) April 6, 2026
Photos courtesy of Meghan’s Instagram, As Ever’s Instagram.
