As we walked out of my 12-week scan, shaking and lightheaded, I turned to my partner and said ‘But, you know, that whole screen could just be a video; the same video they show to everyone. We’d never know’.
Before getting pregnant I was in the extremely lucky position of having no long-term or ongoing illnesses: physical or mental. Being pregnant threw me into such deep whirlpools of anxiety that, more than once, I genuinely wondered if I was pregnant at all. With a kind of uneasy thrill, I read about Queen Mary’s ‘phantom pregnancy’ of 1555 and wondered if I, too, had conjured this sickness, this thickening around the middle, this halt in my periods through hormonal changes, maternal longing and unchecked delusion alone. I did three pregnancy tests, went for all the right scans and yet, until my tiny purple son pushed out into the bathing pool of an East London birth centre, there was still a part of me that wondered if I was having a baby at all.
So it was with a strange mix of horror, distaste, sympathy and fatigue that I learned of the ‘Meghan Moonbump’ theories circulating on the internet.
Why do people accuse Meghan Markle of faking her pregnancy and what is a ‘moon bump’?
In particularly dank and unpleasant corners of YouTube, Reddit and the like, anonymous strangers have built videos, threads and illustrated essays expanding on the crackpot theory that Meghan Markle is, in fact, not pregnant, but wearing a strap on rubber belly, has employed a surrogate, or is otherwise ‘faking’ it. In fact, global searches for ‘Meghan Markle fake pregnancy’ and ‘Meghan Markle fake bump’ regularly trend.
There are two parts to this strange phenomenon; firstly, Meghan Markle is a woman of colour, secondly she is a member of the royal family. The first part is significant. In every illustration in almost every single pregnancy and birth book, on every pregnancy test box, in all our tampon, nappy and breastpump adverts, on every online online advice column, at every NCT class and in every medical diagram, the woman and her baby we are exposed to is white. In Britain we simply are not publicly familiar with what pregnancy, birth and newborns look like for women of colour. It is a silence, created by capitalism, convention and unconscious bias.
meghan markle pregnancy style©Getty
When similar rumours centred around Beyonce or Serena Williams it was, outright racism and loony online conspiracies-aside, perhaps the result of people simply not knowing what a pregnant woman of colour, the birth of a baby of colour, will look and be like. This becomes dangerous when, as we’ve seen in the recent UK Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths, the chances of death for Black women in childbirth (1 in 2,500) is five times higher than that of white women.
As Dr Ria Clarke told the Pregnant Then Screwed conference, while this is in part because Black and Asian women are more likely to be affected by social and economic problems, “We need to talk about the fact Black women may not feel that they will be taken seriously, which might make them less likely to disclose how they are feeling.” The National Health Service is one of the only, truly universal services in the UK; used and staffed by a huge range of people. It has been intentionally underfunded for a decade by this government, creating a shortfall of 107,743 personnel in England, with 3,000 midwives leaving every year and health visitor services being either eliminated or privatised as a result. But even so, implicit bias must, argues Clarke, still be actively challenged with an anti-racist stance and training.
The second part is just as important. As an actress-turned-princess, Meghan Markle is, by definition, enigmatic. Most people will never meet her, she lives behind a wall of security and royal protocol, she is forced by her position to be as distant, unknowable and neutral as any high profile diplomatic figure or head of state. She is, therefore, a vacuum into which we can pour our every fear, hope, theory and trauma. It doesn’t take a huge amount of psychological insight to suggest that those people claiming she’s faking symptoms and waddling around beneath a giant inflatable belly are, consciously or unconsciously, deeply unsettled and uncertain about their own bodies, fertility, status, intentions and actions. To snipe, criticise, doubt and attack a stranger during one of the most intimate and precarious periods of her life, says far more about you, the slanderer, than her, the victim.
Read more: Harry and Meghan’s relationship timeline
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle relationship timeline – Grazia
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July 2016: Meghan And Harry Meet
So when did the future Duke and Duchess of Sussex meet? Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were introduced by a mutual friend in July 2016, originally thought to be Markus Anderson (also the director of Soho house) but who was later confirmed to be Violet von Westenholz. Meghan said in an interview that before she met the Harry she didn’t know much about him ‘the only thing that I had asked [our mutual friend] was, ‘Well is he nice?’. According to Harry he knew Meghan was The One from ‘the very first time we met.’ after only two dates Harry asked Meghan to accompany him on a trip to Botswana.
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October – November 2016: Kensington Palace’s Statement
In October 2016 that the Express became the first newspaper to publish news that Prince Harry had a new girlfriend. However just a month later, Kensington Palace released a statement condemning the ‘wave of abuse and harassment’ faced by Meghan. The unprecedented statement, which referred to Meghan as Harry’s girlfriend for the first time, emphasized that Prince Harry was ‘worried about Ms. Markle’s safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her.’ It continued ‘It is not right that a few months into a relationship with him that Ms. Markle should be subjected to such a storm.’ The palace were also forced to address speculation that Prince William was unhappy with Harry for confirming the relationship too soon, stating ‘The Duke of Cambridge absolutely understands the situation concerning privacy and supports the need for Prince Harry to support those closest to him.’
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December – February 2017: Things Get More Serious
Early in December 2017 Meghan was confirmed as the most Googled actress of 2016. In the same month, the couple were photographed together for the first time in London, shopping for a Christmas tree at the Pines and Needles store and attending a performance of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. By January 2017 a source told US weekly that Harry had introduced Meghan to Kate and Prince Charlotte and that the ‘meeting went well’. Meanwhile a source told The Sun that Meghan had ‘virtually moved in’ with Prince Harry to his cottage on the Kensington Palace estate.
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March – May 2017: Meghan Attends Weddings With Harry
By March things were openly getting pretty serious between the two: Meghan accompanied Harry to Jamaica for a wedding for the first time (his friend’s Tom ‘Skippy’ Inskip to Lara Hughes-Young). On April the 7th Meghan announced that she was closing down her lifestyle blog The Tig writing ‘What began as a passion project (my little engine that could) evolved into an amazing community of inspiration, support, fun and frivolity. You’ve made my days brighter and filled this experience with so much joy.’ In May, Meghan and Harry attended their first public event together at the Polo in Coworth Park (where they also engaged in some PDA). Later in May Prince Harry was seen driving Meghan to the reception of Pippa Middleton and James Matthew’s wedding.
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September 2017: The First Official Public Appearance
Welcome to Meghan the style Icon: at the opening of Prince Harry’s Invictus Games in September Meghan wore a maroon midi dress with a pleated chiffon skirt by one of her favourite Canadian brands, Aritzia with a burgundy biker jacket by Mackage. The next day the couple were photographed sitting together at the wheelchair tennis and ‘broke with royal protocol’ by holding hands and kissing at the closing ceremony. On the 5th of September In an interview with Vanity Fair, Meghan stated: ‘We’re a couple. We’re in love. I’m sure there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but I hope what people understand is that this is our time.’
