Ex royal Meghan Markle is facing backlash online after her latest product promotion featured the cover of a community cookbook with women in hijabs, while advertising alcohol.
“Painting with a broad stroke but… Using the cover of a cookbook with women in hijabs to promote alcohol sales? Seriously?” one user in the Saint Meghan Markle Reddit wrote.
The criticism centers around the book Together: Our Community Cookbook, which Markle helped publish in 2018 to raise funds for survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire in London.
The book features members of the Hubb Community Kitchen, many of whom are Muslim women, pictured wearing hijabs. In Muslim culture, alcohol cosumption is generally forbidden.
In the promo post, the cookbook appears behind a jar of cocktail garnish.
“Tone deaf, as ever,” one commenter wrote. Another added, “So much for their crackerjack comms team. This is a shocking oversight.”
A separate commenter criticized the disconnect between the original purpose of the cookbook and the alcohol tie-in.
“It’s also culturally tone deaf to use women in hijab to sell alcohol,” they wrote, noting that the book was “published to raise money to support the diverse community of people who were displaced following a London tower block inferno in which many residents were trapped and sadly lost their lives.”
Others questioned whether Markle or her team had approved the product placement.
“What’s so comical is that As If is so desperate they’re even going back to the Grenville [sic] cookbook,” one Redditor said. “I wonder how much she got paid to do this?”
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The original Together cookbook project was widely praised when released, with proceeds aiding those affected by the 2017 fire that killed 72 people.
Markle, then a newlywed in the British royal family, called the women of the Hubb Kitchen “my friends” and celebrated their efforts to rebuild community through cooking.
But in this latest context, critics say the imagery undermines that spirit. “It’s her freakish attention to detail, as ever,” one user wrote sarcastically, suggesting Markle should have noticed the potential controversy before the post went live.
Others framed it as a broader pattern. “Tone deaf, as ever,” one repeated. “Also, whoever did this is very ignorant.”
