The role of an elite lifestyle guru is to present aspirational entertaining ideas that could almost be replicated by ordinary folks, but can’t be matched exactly without staff and one’s own goat to milk. Martha Stewart once presented a recipe for making marshmallows, an item available for about two bucks on the shelves of any store. Goop impresario Gwyneth Paltrow sold a candle that supposedly smelled like her genitals for… reasons.

On her hit Netflix show “With Love, Meghan,” the Duchess of Sussex creates a balloon arch for a kid’s birthday party with a pump you could get for less than $20 and makes little tea sandwiches in cute shapes, and on the internet she got literally compared to Marie Antionette. It’s so unhinged that some writers tried to make the show’s ratings, in Netflix’s top ten, into a negative because it didn’t do as well as “Meghan and Harry.”

I wonder what the difference is.

I’m lying. You know what it is.

“There is an obvious answer here. Ultimately it does come down to racism,” said Simone Phillips, who operates the local food site Charm City Table. Paltrow, Stewart and Ina Garten of “The Barefoot Contessa” are rich white ladies, but Meghan — actual royalty — is a rich biracial lady, so critics act like her show takes it a diamond-encrusted bridge too far.

So far, the duchess has been accused of bragging about keeping bees, a pastime Baltimoreans do on their roofs, or using a pricey but readily available Le Creuset pan that lasts virtually forever if taken care of. “I have some at home right now, and I’m not some millionaire,” Phillips said. “I did not fly to Paris to get it shipped to me.”

Some “With Love, Meghan” haters have had their own expensive knives out for her since the moment she started dating Prince Harry. Perhaps that’s because she’s living their adolescent fantasy, and a woman like her isn’t supposed to.

And the umbrage is further umbraging because she’s not only living in style but unapologetically enjoying herself. “It’s Black joy,” said Lynne Childress of Annapolis, a longtime enthusiast of scratch cooking and painting furniture, and my identical twin sister. “That offends some people.”

Every woman I spoke to for this column was raised in majority-Black Baltimore, where it’s common to know every type of Black person. “We can be hood, hood-adjacent or from Roland Park or Homeland,” Phillips said.

It’s not surprising then that those who look like us throw parties or have nice things, whether they spent coupons or the whole treasure chest. What is spent on each “With Love, Meghan” project " might be aspirational, but to say it’s not relatable? That’s ridiculous,” said Kendra Nelson, a lifestyle influencer known as the Charm City Maven.

The Park Heights native took her cues from her proud homemaker mom, Cynthia, who sewed dresses from her own patterns and designed curtains and homemade cards. Now Nelson chronicles her own fabulousness so that people know what’s possible. “The [critical] narrative is pushing against the idea that I can have a joyful, easy fun life,” Nelson said. “Black women have the right and ability to live their full lives. It shouldn’t be such a hard thing to reach for.”

It’s not. Both my grandmothers were consummate hostesses; one had her own garden in her modest but immaculate Prince George’s County home. My sister once made our Thanksgiving dressing out of bread she baked herself. I, on the other hand, used to joke that we should do a show called “Girl, You Know You Can Buy That” where Lynne would harvest her own almond milk and I would just buy a carton at Giant. But even as a single mom with little time on my hands, I have been known to happily make my own matzo balls and vegan cheese.

Black women are not a monolith. My sister, and, by extension, Meghan, whose show has already been renewed, do a lot. But they love it. So let them.

It’s not that mainstream audiences aren’t accustomed to seeing Black wealth on TV. The rich people on “Real Housewives of Potomac” or the recent Maryland-based CBS soap “Beyond The Gates” are blingier. What Meghan has, however, is referred to as a soft life — an existence that requires time and money, but has an ease that’s separated from the grit and toil in which Black people are expected to dwell.

And that’s what pisses the haters off. In 2020, London-based writer Liv Siddall claimed that the image of Black lifestyle blogger and former Elle editor Paula Sutton relaxing on her English countryside estate triggered Siddall into deleting her Instagram account. Many on Twitter at the time immediately clocked that Siddall seemed to be insinuating that it’s inauthentic for non-white people to aspire to that sort of rarified life. Maybe if she was picking vegetables as the cook, she’d belong, but as the lady of the manor? Unheard of!

My best friend Melanie Hood-Wilson, a talented scratch cook, said Meghan’s whole vibe would be received differently if she said, “‘This recipe is from my grandmama down in Alabama.’ We’re supposed to struggle, to be poor person aspirational. Meghan is rich girl aspirational.”

The whole point of the soft life genre, from Martha to the turtleneck-clad heroines of Nancy Meyers movies sipping white wine in their massive coastal kitchens, is to present an aesthetic that is probably fiscally out of reach but still fun to think about and try to replicate at HomeGoods. The resistance to Meghan, apart from the fact that some people just hate her, is a persistent disconnect between who gets to have that dream, and who doesn’t. Surprise! If you can buy that pan, or pump those balloons, you get to have it. And we’re gonna revel in it.

“One of the problems here is that people want her to make herself smaller,” Hood-Wilson said. “We don’t do that anymore. I’m not making myself small for anyone.”