Watch 12-Year-Old Meghan Markle Fight Sexism

HOLLYWOOD, CA — She may not be the queen, but Hollywood native Meghan Markle, the newest addition to the royal family, kind of rules.

Markle, who raised eyebrows with the literal feminist step of walking herself partway down the aisle to marry Prince Harry Saturday, has, as it turns out, been fighting for women’s equality her whole life. Video surfaced this week from 1993 of a 12-year-old Markle telling Nick News how she took Procter & Gamble to task for a sexist commercial selling dishwashing soap to women. Markle, befreckled and earnest, explained to a reporter how the commercial made her feel.

“When I first saw the commercial, I knew something had to be done because I was furious,” she said.
In the commercial, women throw their dishwashing gloves out windows across America as a narrator announces, “The gloves are off. Women are fighting greasy pots and pans with Ivory clear.”

Markle watched the commercial in her classroom during a news segment.

"In the commercial, they said women are battling grease, meaning only women do dishes," Markle wrote to the CEO of Procter & Gamble. "When they heard this, the boys in my class started saying 'yeah, that's where women belong - in the kitchen.' It makes me feel like they are going to grow up thinking that girls are less than them, like boys are better than girls.”

Markle asked Procter & Gamble to change the commercial to "people" instead of "women." It worked. The company actually changed its commercials, and Markle learned a powerful lesson about speaking out.

"If you see something that you don't like or are offended by on television or any other place," Markle told the Nick News reporter. "Write letters and send them to the right people, and you can really make a difference for not just yourself but lots of other people."

Years later, Markle still gets choked up at the memory of that experience. She told an audience at a UN symposium on women how she had written letters not only to Procter & Gamble at the time but also to first lady Hillary Clinton and women's rights attorney Gloria Allred, receiving replies encouraging her to fight for equality. Then the commercial changed, and a young girl realized she could make a difference in the world.

"It was at that moment that I realized the magnitude of my actions," she told the crowd. "At the age of 11, I had created my small level of impact by standing up for equality."

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