by Megyn Kelly
These are human beings. So many anchors cover these stories and won’t even put on a guest to defend the person being attacked—they choose two attack-dog guests, and tear the subject limb from limb, seemingly with glee. I can’t stand this—it shows no understanding of the power of our microphones, no appreciation for the responsibility we have.
TV—especially cable news—is not unlike the seventh-grade Group in that way—once a person has been identified as a target, The Group smells weakness and pounces. If someone does something newsworthy or a public figure falls, it’s fine to cover it. But we must also remember that behind every story, there are real men and women trying to live their lives. Many have spouses, and often children. Some hosts don’t care—they want scorched earth and take-no-prisoners TV. I did that as a lawyer, and that’s not how I want to live anymore. Now I want to be curious and honest without transforming myself into a carnival barker.
Years after the Weiner-does-it-again scandal, Doug and I ran into Anthony and Huma on the Upper East Side. They were sitting on a bench outside a coffee shop. She had a big smile—she looked happy, relaxed. The four of us had a great conversation about our kids and New York City schools. I thought: This is the Anthony Weiner she knows. This is the man who wrote me that card after Yardley was born. The man who brought himself into ill repute, but who is still a husband, a father and a human being on this earth.
And then, he did it again, sending a woman erotic photos of himself, including one with his sleeping child next to him on his bed. Huma left him. And all I could think about was her smiling face that day on the bench, and the sometimes inescapable cruelty of human nature.
Since launching The Kelly File, which is now the most successful news show in all of cable (O’Reilly is an opinion program), I have been asked many times how I managed to excel in what is still a male-dominated industry. The truth is, every industry in which I’ve ever worked has been controlled by men—from retail stores to customer service to health clubs, restaurants, law firms, and now television. So I’ve had a lot of experience. Generally, my bosses have been male. Generally, they’ve also been supportive, fair, and more than ready to give any deserving employee an opportunity to advance, male or female.
Having said that, I am an American woman born in 1970. Of course I’ve also experienced sexism, and even sexual harassment. And I have some thoughts on how to navigate both.
My feeling on the subject of women’s equality is that it’s better to show than tell. I believe in the Steve Martin mantra, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” I have an enormous poster of this saying in my team’s pod at Fox. When it comes to living this just-be-better philosophy, Oprah is my role model. In her years coming up, she never made a “thing” of her gender or her race. She just wowed us all. That’s my goal: do the absolute best I can, and don’t waste time complaining. The less time talking about our gender, the better.
In all the years I’ve worked at Fox, I have never had to ask for a promotion. I have been asked what I think is the next step for me, and I have never been shy to answer. So many broadcasters line up outside the boss’s office, asking for this show or that one. I’ve spent my time in my own office, working night and day, and opportunity came to me. Most of my own power has come from excellence, not advocacy. My approach is to say to myself, “Just do better. Be better.” That’s not to say there’s no bias, no sexism. There is, and it’s not good. It’s just that for me, the solution of doing better is far more empowering than lamenting one’s circumstances.
It’s not that I reject the idea of demanding a place at the table—quite the contrary. But in my own experience, the most effective way to get opportunities is with performance, not persistence. Hard work matters. I really believe that. It can get you on the Law Review, on the moot court team, on the partnership track, in the anchor chair. It can improve your friendships, your relationships, yourself. But you can’t half-ass it. And sitting around convincing yourself that you deserve more without busting your backside to get it is not only bad form, it’s pointless.
I’ve never worked at a place where some star employee—man or woman—was unknown to everyone, toiling away unnoticed. If you believe this is happening to you, ask yourself if you have worked as hard as possible, studied extensively, and made yourself invaluable. If you can’t honestly say you have done all of those things, quit complaining.
“I don’t feel valued,” a co-worker once said to me.
“That’s because you’re not,” I said. “You should go somewhere else.”
I saw no reason to sugarcoat it. Kelly family values in their purest form. Settle for more.
Many people choose to work less hard and to prioritize something else. That’s great. My point is simply, if your goal is to rise to the top of your company, and it’s not happening, you must look first at your own work ethic and work product before assuming it’s gender bias.
Like most American women, I’ve been interrupted frequently by male colleagues, who don’t do the same to the men at the table. I’ve been checked out physically by more than a few bosses. I’ve found myself excluded from the boys-only nights out at the bar at which bonding with a superior takes place. Do men sometimes get a leg up at work because they have access to male supervisors that women don’t have? Absolutely. You cannot control that.
But you can control you. Employers want to improve the bottom line. You may not get invited to the bar with the boys. But do better, be better, and the odds are the hungover boys will soon be asking themselves how you keep getting such great opportunities.
My general approach when hitting a sexist glass ceiling is to try to crash right through it with stellar work product. Bosses tend to be mercenary. If you are great, he’ll likely promote you. If he doesn’t because of sexism, the options get tougher. Filing a legal complaint is a potential option, but gender-discrimination cases tend to be protracted and very nasty. Some women choose to find a new job, as unfair as that seems. The choices are fraught with peril, which is exactly why many women resign themselves to operating in a sexist workplace, hoping that with time things will get better.
Sexual harassment is even more dangerous. Interrupting you because you’re a woman is one thing. Trying to shove a tongue down your throat is another. Unfortunately, I’ve been there too.
When I was sixteen and clueless about the world, Kelly and I took a job at a local sporting goods shop. Our boss was a dirty old man. He used to walk by and look at my ass when I was restocking shelves and say, “Are you sure you’re only sixteen?” He was always telling me and Kelly how he was going to “take us back on Old Reliable,” a ski waxing machine where one could ostensibly lie down. When we were cleaning up at the end of the day, he would watch porn on a TV in the back. We laughed at him. He was a joke to us. And eventually, we both quit.
I know very few women who don’t have stories like this. Remember: I practiced employment law. What I learned was that some men are absolutely still doing the things you heard would happen in the 1950s. You would not believe how many bosses are still grabbing their employees’ breasts, or leaving X-rated images on their assistant’s chair, or chasing their young female employees around the desk. It happens all the time. And it needs to stop happening, now.
18
On “Having It All”
I own an oversize green T-shirt with i want it all emblazoned on the front. One time, while we were visiting my mother-in-law, Jackie, I emerged from the bedroom wearing that shirt and carrying Thatcher, who was still a baby. It was some ridiculously early hour. I had been up late the night before with Yardley, who was sick. I had just come off a week of long hours at the office. My eyes had dark circles under them. My hair was everywhere. It felt like I hadn’t slept in a century. Jackie looked from me, rocking my baby, to the front of that shirt and back again and said, “Oh, you’ve got it all, all right.”
And I do: my own show, a great husband, three beautiful kids I love more than words can say. Now I just have to survive
to the end of the week.
Sometimes on particularly rough days I say, “Doug, am I going to make it? This might be the week I get the chalk outline around me.”
“Eh, you’ll make it,” he says.
We’re in a particularly good place now. Ages six, five, and two are a sweet spot—way better than three, two, and newborn. Way better. Back then, I used to slide into my car and say to myself, “Time to go to that spa they call work!” (Okay, I still do that from time to time.)
We have resources now, which clearly makes things easier. Some moms don’t like to admit having a nanny or other support. I don’t understand why. Every dollar I have, I’ve earned. I pay my taxes, donate to charity, help my family, and am saving for my children. My hard work has helped us afford household help, which allows us the luxury of spending time with our children when we are not at work, rather than tending to all of the household tasks, but if we could not afford help, we’d figure it out. I’m new to money. I spent most of my existence without it. I know how to live frugally. If we were to lose it all tomorrow, we’d change our hours, move out of the city, and make other adjustments, just like my parents did. Money removes many stressors, but it has not changed my level of happiness, nor who I am. It changes how I spend my time.
Right now I work at night, so my time with the kids during the week is mostly during the day. We socialize with the parents of our children’s friends. I can chaperone daytime field trips. I go into my son’s school and read to his class during library. I go to most of the school parties and all of the plays. I miss plenty of events too, which pains me, but every working parent makes sacrifices.
Our mornings involve enormous mugs of coffee, Cheerios, fruit, plenty of stories, and music via Pandora. We dance. We feed the fish, which I did not want to buy but which, in the absence of any other caretakers, now appear to be “mine.” I do not like fish and take care of them only begrudgingly, but the truth is, I’m getting kind of attached to the damn things. I help the kids get breakfast. They eat a lot in the mornings, so Doug and I often feel like short-order cooks—“One scrambled, one fried with cheese, double wheat! Coming up!” I help pick out the kids’ outfits, although it’s really more of an attempt to block Doug from doing it. He’ll see me cast a disapproving eye at Yardley’s outfit when she’s not looking.
“What’s wrong with it?” he’ll say of the outfit he chose. “It matches!”
“It does match,” I’ll say, “in that a polka-dot pair of pants ‘matches’ a polka-dot shirt.”
It’s better just to beat him to the closet. Soon she’ll be in kindergarten, and I’m delighted to say they wear uniforms at her school. Now I can sleep in a few more minutes.
Weekends are all about them. We don’t make it to church every Sunday, though we do our best. Doug grew up Presbyterian, but like me, all of our children have been baptized Catholic. Yates will have his First Communion next year. Our priest is Father Jonathan Morris, who is on Fox News sometimes. He’s supportive, thoughtful, and good-looking. So handsome, in fact, that his nickname around the studio is Father What-a-Waste (God forgive us).
I’m most exhausted on Sunday nights, because you have to dig deep to keep up with three kids nonstop. Luckily, they’re very good kids. That makes time with them very pleasant.
I remember talking to an administrator at Yates’s school. I said, “I love spending time with him. He’s one of my favorite people. He’s the best company.”
“Not everybody feels that way,” she said.
That was the first time it dawned on me that some parents and kids struggle with each other, even at young ages. Now sometimes I see it on the playground, families who don’t love their time together, and it’s heartbreaking. I mean, is it hard sometimes? Of course. But I’ll tell you, the first time you tuck your baby into his crib and say, “Sweet dreams. I love you,” and you turn to walk out and hear back “I love you, Mama!” you know what you’re doing on this earth.
One day I was feeling full of self-doubt—wondering if I was doing this motherhood thing right. Just then, Yates looked at me and Doug and announced, “I’m going to marry a girl named Megyn. She’s alive and she’s five and I need to find her.” Thank you, universe.
Balancing motherhood with work has been hugely assisted by having a husband who supports my time at the office and a job that allows for my time at home.
I’ll start with the office. First, I have something critical to balancing my dual roles: flexibility in my schedule. Unlike the law, my TV job rarely requires twelve or sixteen hours at the office. Some days I can do six hours, some days a split shift. If I need to come in late, I can. If I need to work from home—except for airtime—it’s generally no problem. That’s been incredibly helpful to me. Without this kind of freedom, I don’t think I’d be succeeding.
I also was fortunate enough to feel supported right after my children were born—I had nice long maternity leaves (by American standards), for which I was not shamed and, to the contrary, was encouraged to take.
I nursed all three of my children for the first year and exclusively for the first six months of their lives. It took time and dedication, what with all of that pumping and late-night feeding, but I was happy to do it—it was another way to take care of them even when I was at the office.
Now that they’re older, the kids come to work with me fairly often, and my colleagues help, especially Abby. We have office picnics. We get pizza and chocolate milk, and they run up and down the long hallways (they’re city kids—we have no fields). Everyone greets the kids warmly; it’s not uncommon to see people’s children at Fox.
My kids love coming to work with me. They love going to the tracking booth. They put the headphones on and speak into the fuzzy microphones for ages, stream-of-consciousness style. Yates and Yards have heard me say lines like, “I’m Megyn Kelly, live in New York!” The first time Yates tried it, he said into the mic, “I’m Yates Brunt! And I’m alive!”
They don’t usually come see me do the show, because 9:00 p.m. is too late for them, but if I’m doing a pretape they’ll come sometimes and sit off to the side, so long as I’m not talking about anything too dark, like terror. My crew will show them the cameras and let them sit at the anchor desk. My hair and makeup team Chris and Vincenza will give them spiked hair and painted faces—it’s like going to a street fair.
I think it’s good for them to see their mother in a powerful position where she’s clearly in control. I’m glad they will grow up to understand—inherently—that women loving their work is a natural thing in this world.
When possible, I look for opportunities to take my children with me when I go on the road for work. When Yates graduated from preschool, I took him with me when I went to interview Mitt Romney at a summit he holds every June in Deer Valley, Utah. He tested my microphone at the convention hall. We went on the chair lifts. We went on the Alpine Coaster. He loved it all.
Likewise, I took Yardley with me to the debates in Iowa in 2012. I’d be sitting in the Iowa convention center, pumping in the bathroom stalls—those pumps are so loud—and pushing her around the convention center in a stroller. As long as she was moving, she was happy. I’d push her around during meetings, and then my colleagues would take a turn around the debate prep table. I have a picture of Yards at Newt Gingrich’s podium before the Iowa debate that I figure she can use if she ever runs for president. I propose the caption “Born to Run.”
In December 2013, I was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It was his last month on the show. I was still nursing Thatcher, so he (and Doug) came with me. Thatch was being pretty good backstage, but he started to have a meltdown right before I went onstage. So I did what any working mother would do: I nursed him, while sitting there mic’ed and glammed up. Time stopped for a minute, and then I pulled up my dress, handed the baby to Doug, and hurried onstage, carrying a tissue because I had a hideous, hacking cold. Ah, the glamorous life.
When it came time for my second Fortune Most Powerful Wom
en event—this one in Washington, DC—I took Yardley with me, and we headed south on the train.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“This is a gathering of a bunch of women,” I said, “who have done amazing things. They are coming together to celebrate their power and how strong they are, and how much they’ve accomplished.”
“Are we two of them?” she asked.
After I gave my remarks, she was running around the lobby of the hotel and I was talking to some women while keeping an eye on her out of my peripheral vision. Suddenly I looked over and she was supine on the ground with her fist in the air—a beautiful symbol of power, solidarity, and sheer exhaustion.
I marvel at my friends who are full-time mothers. I don’t know how they do it. One of my closest friends is a stay-at-home mom. I think she has it harder, and she thinks I have it harder. She’s always remarking on how “present” I am when I’m with my kids. But to me full-time caregiving is what’s truly amazing. If I were with my kids full-time, I couldn’t sustain that level of engagement. When Doug and I have the kids all day every day on vacation, I’m wiped out.
If I were a stay-at-home mom, I like to think I could get to be as good as my friends, but it would take time. And patience. The truth is, I always knew that if I became a mom, I would be a working mother. I love that I can go out into the world, and then when I walk into that house, I’m full of excitement and energy. The kids experience it by osmosis. They see that I love my job. They understand that they can find a job someday they will really love. I hope they’re really learning that.
I also hope they’re learning that one of the best ways to make this work is to find a supportive spouse. Neither Doug nor I came in with any strong biases about gender roles. When we got together, he made more money than I did. Now I make more, and probably that will cycle around many more times over the rest of our lives. He is not threatened because he’s secure. It helps that we both now love what we do.
