Gloria Steinem, the journalist who helped define second-wave feminism and co-founded Ms. magazine, died Wednesday at her New York City home. She was 92. Her foundation said she passed “peacefully… surrounded by some of the many who loved her,” and that she worked for equality “until the very end.”
That is a real loss in American public life. What followed on social media was something else: a grim, familiar countdown. Critics of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry did not wait for a Sussex statement. They predicted the performance — the carefully lit grief, the “sisterhood” caption, the reminder that the Duchess of Sussex once sat in Steinem’s living room and called her a mentor.
The prediction is ugly. It is also earned.
Steinem was not a lifestyle influencer. She spent decades arguing that hierarchy itself was the problem — that women should be linked, not ranked. She said the quiet part out loud about Meghan’s favorite accessory. In 2020, after the two of them cold-called voters from Steinem’s table, Steinem praised Meghan as “smart, authentic, funny, political.” Then she added that the “princess” stereotype hanging over her head “is a problem.” America, she noted, “had a whole revolution to get rid of royalty.”
Meghan heard that. She kept the titles anyway.
She is still the Duchess of Sussex. Her children are styled prince and princess. Harry still trades on the surname that opened every door the couple later claimed was a prison. They left senior royal duties, then spent years monetizing the very institution they denounced — Netflix, Spotify, book deals, galas, a Montecito compound, and a lifestyle line that has struggled to look like a movement and often looks like a merch table.
That is the contradiction Steinem’s death throws into relief. The woman who spent a lifetime attacking inherited rank became a prop in a couple’s project to keep the rank and shed the duty.
Their friendship was real enough as a photo opportunity. After Harry and Meghan settled in California, Meghan learned Steinem was nearby and asked her to help thank voter-registration organizers. They filmed a backyard conversation for Makers. Steinem later appeared in the couple’s Netflix project Live to Lead. In 2023 she presented Meghan with a Ms. Foundation Women of Vision award. Meghan visited Steinem’s Manhattan brownstone as recently as last fall, hugging her on camera and feeding the “Meg and Glo” sisterhood narrative. A Sussex Christmas card even sat in Steinem’s home.
Friendship is not the issue. The issue is what Meghan and Harry do with other people’s moral capital.
Meghan has spent years selling herself as a feminist who was “just Meg” on those voter calls — then flying private, building a personal brand around jam and linen, and lecturing the public about digital harm while posting her own children. Critics have called the act bumper-sticker feminism: slogans about ambition and sisterhood that somehow always loop back to her victimhood, her wedding, her titles, her content pipeline. Independent voices said as much when Archetypes landed — that the project was less a critique of labels than a long commercial for the woman wearing them.
Harry is not a bystander. He told Steinem he was “a feminist too.” Meghan repeated it, holding him up as the model father who “owns” the label. Fine. Then explain why the feminist household still requires courtesy titles, security theater, and a running grievance against the family that made those titles valuable. You cannot call monarchy a cage and keep the key on a necklace. Recent commentary has put it bluntly: if the Crown is so toxic, drop the styling. They will not, because the styling is the product.
Steinem herself was never a saint of consistency — she was a political operator with sharp edges and a long list of allies and enemies. But she did the work in public for half a century. She did not need a duke’s surname to be taken seriously. Meghan did. That is why the “fake tears” mockery landed so fast. People have watched this couple turn funerals, documentaries, and “humanitarian of the year” nights into brand maintenance. They have watched staff turnover, failed partnerships, and lectures about climate and children that never seem to constrain the private jet. They have watched a woman who accepted a feminist award from Steinem continue to climb using her husband’s inherited rank — the exact hierarchy Steinem spent her life trying to flatten.
No Sussex tribute had dropped in the first hours after the announcement. That will not last. There will be a statement. There will be a photograph from a previous hug. There may be a donation link, a foundation mention, a line about “the power of sisterhood.” None of that proves the grief is fake. It proves the couple cannot encounter a famous death without checking whether it fits the narrative.
Gloria Steinem’s near-century was larger than Montecito. Treating her passing as another beat in the Harry-and-Meghan content calendar is not sisterhood. It is extraction. If Meghan wants to honor the woman who warned her that “princess” was a problem, she could start by acting like it — drop the performance, drop the titles she was told were the problem, and stop using other women’s lives as set dressing for her own.
The clock is running. The public already knows the beat.
