Meghan Markle stepped out today, for the second day in a row, for a meeting with the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). She’s attended an ACU meeting before but this is her first appearance since it was formally announced that the ACU is one of her four royal patronages. 

Meghan has spoken often about higher education and its value, particularly for women. During her visit today, she was on Skype with a student from Ghana, Hilary Harawo and the students who were there at City, University of London seemed pretty jacked up about seeing her. Look in the background, it’s a pretty young crowd. And that’s the royal goal here with their messaging – to generate support specifically with that demographic. 

Since the confirmation of her royal patronages, Royal Meghan has efficiently visited each of the four (Smart Works, Mayhew, the National Theatre, and ACU) in exactly 3 weeks. She’s checking off everything she needs to do now, before the baby. It’s not known how long Meghan’s maternity leave will be – at this point, the best we have to go on is what Kate did with her kids. She stepped out 6 weeks after giving birth to Big G, four months after Charlotte, and took most of the summer off after Trey. That said, I wonder if Prince Harry will be taking some leave. Paternity leave. It’s obviously not exactly the same for them, being that their “jobs” aren’t like civilian “jobs”, and so much of their work is tied to them being themselves, and it’s not like those roles can be filled by substitutes but, symbolically, it’d be a really interesting message, non? 

Let’s talk about the hair now. Some people are calling it a topknot. This is not a topknot in my books. Show me the knot. There is no knot. This is a bun. There’s a difference. That difference is why I don’t like it. It’s basically a sock bun. And sock buns are the worst. But sock buns, as unstylish as they are, go over with the middle, basically the people who bitch about hem lengths and hosiery and dark polish. That’s the fashion lane that both Royal Meghan and Princess Kate have to navigate. You can’t fire up the people who don’t get that the sock bun is over. A 2019 topknot would be too much for them.