Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s royal tour of southern Africa kicked off on Monday, September 23, and it seems like they’re having a great time. Day one of the festivities, which took place in Cape Town, included some dancing, a moving speech about female empowerment, and a viral moment involving Markle’s ponytail.
What’s that last one, you ask? Well, I’ll show you. At some point during the day, Markle and Prince Harry stopped by a workshop in Cape Town’s Nyanga township that educates children on self-empowerment, where they posed for a few pics with students. As the photographer snapped away, Prince Harry noticed Markle’s ponytail was a bit out of place, and he casually fixed it for her. The Duchess of Sussex seemed unfazed by the move and just kept smiling for photos.
Check out the sweet moment for yourself, below. The duke is always looking out! (The Markle Instagram fan account, @_duchess_of_sussex, has the footage.)
This isn’t the first time Prince Harry has done something like this. Last year at an engagement, he fixed Markle’s hair after the wind slightly messed it up:
Prince Harry and Markle will explore several parts of southern Africa on their tour, including Malawi and Angola. Here are just a few photos from their first day in Cape Town:
Baby Archie only arrived last week, but he’s already been tasked, reportedly, with something big: fixing the so-called “feud” between Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Kate Middleton, and Prince William.
I just…I have a lot of feelings about this. On the one hand, sure: New babies coming into a family are known to ease tensions or rifts. There’s simply no time to be passive aggressive toward your annoying brother-in-law from Texas when there’s a screaming child in the house. But on the other: LOL, what? Baby Archie has only been on this planet for 11 days. He shouldn’t have to bother himself with his famous family’s problems. All he needs to be worrying about at the present moment is napping.
According to People magazine, Baby Archie gives Prince William and Prince Harry, who have allegedly grown apart over the last few years, an opportunity to reconnect.
“William and Harry will want their children to know their cousins and do things together, so they will work harder at their relationship,” a source close to the royal family tells People. “The brothers will have a different kind of relationship and move on.”
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Look, I get it: If a feud does exist—and that’s a big if—then Baby Archie probably will help the two princes put their differences aside. But now all I’m picturing is Archie wearing a three-piece suit and playing couple’s therapist to his father and uncle. In my mind, they’ll all meet in Archie’s vegan paint-colored nursery and hash out their issues. Archie will have to take naps every two minutes, of course, because he’s a literal baby. And his counseling rate would be $500 an hour, at minimum.
I kid, I kid. Archie’s arrival is obviously cause for celebration and an opportunity to mend any fences within the royal core four. Keep in mind, though, that a feud might not even exist. Royals expert Katie Nicholl told Glamour a few months back that any stories of drama between either William and Harry or Kate and Meghan are grossly exaggerated.
“I think this idea of there being a catfight between [Meghan and Kate] has made tantalizing headlines, but I don’t believe that,” she said. “I’ve never heard from my sources that there has ever been a feud or a falling-out. I had heard about an upset over the dress fitting for Princess Charlotte. And I had heard that while Harry was very keen for the two of them to become best friends, there was never that sort of a friendship.”
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She continued, “I think there is some truth to there having been some tension—not just between the duchesses but between the dukes, as well. As we all know, things can gather momentum pretty quickly. So while I think there’s been tension, I don’t believe there has been some feud.”
For what it’s worth, a source tells People that despite all the changes happening in the royal family (like the core four splitting offices), “There is never any doubt that [Harry and William] will be there for each other 100 percent and support each other when it matters.”
It hasn’t even been a week since the controversy over Serena Williams‘ French Open attire, and now the tennis world once again finds itself embroiled in a dustup over what is appropriate for women in the sport.
At the 2018 U.S. Open, French player Alizé Cornet was given a code violation by a chair umpire for removing her shirt on the court, after she realized she was wearing it backward. According to the official Women’s Tennis Association rulebook, female players can change their shirts only off-court. There’s no comparable rule for the men—some of whom, like Novak Djokovic, openly sat shirtless with no repercussions multiple times yesterday.
Cornet had just returned from a 10-minute heat break (it’s currently sweltering in New York), during which she changed her shirt. When she got on the court, she realized she had put it on backward, so she quickly took off the shirt and turned it around. The whole switch took about 10 seconds. The chair umpire who issued the code violation was male.
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Social media users were quick to call out the double standard in Cornet’s situation. That includes Billie Jean King, who wrote on Twitter, “This rule is outdated and impractical.”
Shortly after the incident, the U.S Open issued a statement to clarify its position. “Players who do change their shirts will not be assessed a code violation,” US Open director of communications Chris Widmaier said. “We regret that Ms. Cornet was assessed a code violation. However, luckily, she was assessed a warning only and there was no further penalty above a warning.”
“When possible, if a more private location is near a court and is requested, that player will be allowed to go to that private location to change, and they will not be assessed a bathroom break,” the statement continued. “We follow WTA procedures regarding bathroom breaks. A quick change of attire will not considered one of their two bathroom breaks.” Widmaier said no code violations for similar actions will be assessed going forward in the tournament.
While the U.S. Open may have backpedaled on the issue now, it’s all too clear that the powers-that-be in women’s tennis need to take a look at the ways they are policing their female players’ bodies and attire.
On Friday Bernard Giudicelli of the French Tennis Federation said they would “impose certain limits” on clothing that can be worn during the tournament, beginning with the 2019 French Open. This was in response to Williams’ catsuit (worn back in May), which he said went “too far” and would not be allowed next year.
PHOTO: Jean Catuffe
“It will no longer be accepted,” Giudicelli said. “One must respect the game and the place.”
In an interview with The Cut published today, tennis legend Billie Jean King said of the policing of women’s outfits on the court: “Fashion usually dictates our freedoms. Back in the old days, our wrists and our ankles couldn’t be shown. If you look at the fashion every decade in women’s tennis—which is very small—you can see how things are changing in the world for us: our freedoms, the way we dress, which is good. But I never hear them really talk about how the guys should dress.”
Nothing, it seems, has been more difficult to remedy than the issue of racism and implicit bias in this country, but this week, coffeehouse juggernaut Starbucks attempted to at least begin the conversation when they shut down more than 8,000 of their stores for a day of racial bias training following the April arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia location, sending the internet into a flurry of think pieces and expert quotes that had people wondering: Can a day of company training really fix a problem of this scope?
If the training video Starbucks showed is any indication, they’re at least using historical context to address exclusion. The passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 may have outlawed discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion or national origin, but in the video—released to the public Tuesday—the landmark law serves as a framework for understanding just how difficult it is to change hearts and minds, especially when it comes to the implicit biases we hold.
In the film, created by award-winning documentarian Stanley Nelson and underwritten by Starbucks, a narrator explores how access to public spaces has been regulated in this country, and how those areas have been made largely unattainable to black people. When blacks—who are maligned by stereotypes that have been intensified by the historical stink of slavery—enter those public spaces, it has been a punishable offense. That was no more evident than in April when two black men—Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson—visited a Philadelphia Starbucks to attend a business meeting. While they were waiting for their friend to arrive, and after they’d asked to use the restroom, a Starbucks employee called the police, telling the 911 dispatcher that the men refused to purchase an item or leave. The call resulted in an arrest on suspicion of trespassing—though no charges were filed—and the high-profile incident sparked protests and calls for Starbucks to address what many believed to be racial profiling.
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“It’s time we talk about what it means to not be welcomed as an American citizen,” Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of NAACP Legal Defense Fund and senior consultant to Starbucks’s racial bias training says into the camera. And it’s a conversation Starbucks is committed to having, according to Rosalind ‘Roz’ Brewer, Starbucks’ first woman COO.
“We’ve always said that this training is a first step in a long-term journey—we cannot change ingrained behaviors and implicit biases within four hours,” she told Glamour.com, adding that the company will send representatives to a convening this summer hosted by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and will take steps toward understanding how they can address other forms of bias.
Additionally, she said, the company’s 100,000 hires each year will be receiving racial bias training upon becoming a Starbucks partner—something experts think is nonnegotiable for the chain.
“This wasn’t just a thing that was nice to do,” said Heather McGhee, president of equal-rights public policy organization Demos and an outside advisor to the training. “The executives had to believe and communicate that they couldn’t succeed as a business without addressing this issue,” McGhee said. “And I think they actually did that.”
Chafing at criticism that the training was more symbolic than effective, McGhee reiterated what the company has been saying since the bias workshop was announced—this isn’t just a one-day fix.
“I think that most of the commentary has really focused on the ‘one day’ because that’s the information that’s mostly out there, but the company has tried to get the message out that they know that one day is just the start,” she told Glamour.com. “They’re looking at ongoing, deeper training as well as reviews of their systems and practices and procedures so that the message is continuously reinforced.”
If Starbucks, which, according to TIME.com, stood to lose up to $12 million in its Tuesday afternoon closings, is investing time and money, and opening itself up to public scrutiny, in proposing racial bias training, it’s expected that the firm would make it an ongoing focus, said Tamisha J. Ponder, director of intercultural engagement at the Community College of Baltimore County.
“We know that these types of trainings need to be reinforced,” she said. “I don’t want to discredit this attempt because it speaks volumes. It’s beneficial because it’s their first discussion of racial bias, ever.” When companies and institutions implement racial bias training with this high a profile, it’s safe to assume it isn’t just for a day, Ponder said. And pulling back the layers of implicit bias and the historical context, much as the Starbucks video shows, is key.
“Before we discuss bias, we discuss the social construction of race,” Ponder said, describing her university’s approach to bias training. “By discussing race as a social construct, it exposes America’s history of legal and systemic racism and access to privilege. It lays the framework for how to discuss bias and how our country has legally supported bias to understand how you, yourself, can be biased.”
To measure the success of these trainings, Starbucks will likely do spot audits of their stores, implement retention and hiring practices to promote diversity, and measure engagement and interest in training from their employees.
Of course, there’s research that shows racial sensitivity training isn’t always effective. But considering Starbucks’s corporate Third Place policy—which aims to “create a culture of warmth and belonging where everyone is welcome” according to the website—chairman Howard Schultz’s recent directive that employees should let anyone (not just customers) use the restroom, and the company’s plan to make accessible all racial bias training material to employees, McGhee is hopeful.
“I think it needs to be a national effort…there’s so much misunderstanding about the way race and bias work in the human mind,” McGhee said. “If we’re going to be a diverse democracy, we’ve got to all—as people in this country—have better skills at interacting across lines of race.”
