The media image surrounding the new Duchess of Sussex as a ‘proud feminist’ campaigning on women’s issues puts the meaning of feminism at stake, according to researchers.

'Meghan's Manifesto': Meghan Markle and the Co-option of Feminism published in Celebrity Studies, a journal that focuses on the critical exploration of celebrity, stardom and fame, examines representations of Meghan Markle since her wedding to Prince Harry.

The article examines how national media has ‘bought into’ Meghan’s representation as a feminist by picking up on small gestures such as her wearing trousers and opening the car door for Prince Harry.

“The over-statement of the feminist significance of every small detail of Markle’s public appearances shifts the terms of debate around feminism in the popular imaginary,” say the authors Laura Clancy, a Media and Cultural Studies lecturer at Lancaster University who explores the way in which the monarchy is represented in media culture, and Hannah Yelin from Oxford Brooks University who researches celebrity and gender issues.

Their article says: “Most factions of the media have hence bought into the dominant narrative and suspended critique of power dynamics, in favour of interpreting multiculturalism and feminist ideas as de facto progress; demonstrating how Markle is an effective tool for repositioning the monarchy as an institution.”

It adds: “While we are not discounting that Markle may indeed identify as a feminist and may even have aspirations to use her royal platform for the benefit of women’s issues, there are broader issues at play here around her star image being used to define contemporary feminism and how this feminism is co-opted and policed by institutions with distinctly anti-feminist principles.”

The authors say that the Duchess has been tasked with giving monarchical structures new life and relevance but that this is a feminism that is being carefully policed.

They believe that the Duchess’s activist voice has either been ‘silenced or appropriated’ by the monarchy, citing her decision to quit her acting career, close down her popular blog and social media accounts, for all her public engagement to be ciphered through Kensington Palace.

While the monarchy appears to be celebrating her diversity and modernising influence, this is only permitted within prescribed boundaries, adds the article.

“Thus, a celebrity (post) feminist such as Markle is of great value to the British monarchy keen to set themselves apart from these other forms of patriarchy and to mask, or at least deflect attention from, their own intensely problematic relationship with issues of race, gender, class and religion,” write the authors.

“What is at stake here is much more that the representations of one woman and the meanings contained therein; it is the meaning of feminism as popularly understood.

“This is a definition of feminism that resides in a vague idea of modernisation and makes no reference to equality between the sexes. How could it when the very concept of monarchy enshrines Harry’s structural superiority over Meghan?”