Because it’s petty to participate in thoughtless prejudice against successful women.
I’m a little particular about where I get my news each day. I look for solid, in-depth, factual reporting. Emotion and hysteria are a real turn-off. And I don’t watch major news channels like CNN or FOX simply because news anchors annoy me with their made-up faces and constant arguing. Let your guests finish their sentences! I always end up screaming at them internally. I get most of my news from National Public Radio, where the bias is still frustrating but no one was ever a pageant queen, guests are allowed to articulate, and the reporting covers a variety of dorky and obscure topics of interest.
But occasionally I’m forced to watch the major networks, like during the 2016 presidential debates. I spent a lot of time cringing, and afterward felt like the candidates were justified in attacking the moderators… if not for the substance of what the moderators said, then for their delivery. The candidates were to blame for how bad it was too, but the moderators brought edgy energy rather than the staid dignity I hoped to see in a race for the highest office in the land. Was I the only one who missed Tom Brokaw?
As usual, Donald Trump was the loudest complainer about how he’d been treated. During the debate he brushed off Megyn Kelly’s question about his past comments toward women and attacked her later on Twitter. After that storm ended, I didn’t think about Megyn Kelly much until I saw, my means of a Hollywood Reporter article featuring flashy, glamorous photos, that she was publishing a book. I criticized book, article, and Megyn roundly to a friend, saying she was just another blinding news anchor capitalizing on recent publicity and this article wouldn’t exist if she had been ugly, or perhaps a racial/ethnic minority.
But wait – hadn’t I just promised myself to be more pro-woman? And isn’t Megyn Kelly a successful professional woman? I didn’t want to fall into the trap of assuming she’s unlikeable because of who she is as person, not just because the business she’s in presents her a certain way. Later in Barnes and Noble, and decided to pick up her book… and found it well-written and entertaining. And most importantly, even though Megyn doesn’t want to use the word feminist, it was pro-woman in ways that meant a lot to me:
- She was a single career woman for a long time before she became a working mom. I always look for examples of successful single women to follow amid the flood of wedding pictures on Facebook. I’m single and loving my independence at age twenty-seven, but I know I’m not alone in feeling like I’m going against the grain. Megyn worked in biglaw for years and has great advice in her book for women walking any career path.
- She is smart about being a woman in male-dominated industries. In the book, she talks about Fox news boss Roger Ailes’ harassment and the process she walked through in dealing with it. She didn’t run out and make a public accusation of him at the time because she recognized that it wasn’t a good move for her. She dealt with the issue on her own terms and to the advantage of herself and other women.
When Trump went on the attack (on Twitter) after the first presidential debate, Kelly’s four-year-old daughter Yardley stopped to ask her mom, “What’s a bimbo?” Megyn stopped on that moment: only a year ago, her daughter had been mirroring back language of empowerment learned at a dinner for accomplished women in America. Now, with Trump’s rise, little Yardley was internalizing completely different messages. Kelly gets it: America has a problem with sexism, and it’s hurting us.
I’m still not going to watch her show, and her face will probably still annoy me when it comes on TV. I’m not agreeing with everything she says or claiming she’s a saint – we all have the capacity for good and bad in us. But I respect and support her success. She’s trailblazing in her field. Congratulations on your book, Megyn Kelly, and keep asking more of the questions women in America want answers to.