In the glorious land of yesteryears, I gained a lot of sympathy and empathy for Megyn Kelly when she acted as a mediator for one of the many tumultuous presidential debates that graced our television sets in 2015 and 2016. You see, when I was a college freshman glued to the New York Times for her WRD 104 class, I decided to base my research on women in the workplace and how the media helps construct our perspective of labor and gender equality. At the forefront of the issue at the time was Megyn Kelly.
Megyn Kelly famously (infamously) asked Mr. Trump to clarify what and whom he meant by “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals” from his twitter account posts. He seemed to have been talking about Rose O’Donnell, but Kelly felt that Americans needed to know for sure. Hours after the debate, it suddenly crossed Mr. Trump’s mind that there was another woman who really irked him, possibly even more than Rosie O’Donnell; moderator Megyn Kelly was added to The List. Upset over the fact that she was “too aggressive” and “overwhelmed him” with too many “hostile questions”, he took to the same social media account she dared to criticize for its obscenely dysfunctional aesthetic to become even more obscenely dysfunctional. It was like watching a toddler temper tantrum where Little Donny screeches, “I NEVER SPILLED DORITOS ON THE FLOOR; IT WASN’T ME; I DIDN’T DO IT!” while shaking a family-sized bag of Doritos all over the plush living room rug and stomping the artificial cheese substance into the porous fibers.
Historically, American women have had to overcome an overwhelming amount of bullshit in order to obtain amazingly beneficial things like the right to vote, own property, have body autonomy, attend university, and not be a legal infant whose entire existence is controlled by men and menstruation. And at the time, I really hoped that Megyn would use the momentum from the debate fiasco to spearhead real change in favor of gender equality in the workplace, to say no more to harassment and bullying. I thought she could help bring more protection for women.
But instead, Megyn responded with “eh.”
She decided she was “done with politics” and wanted to move on to fun and easy stuff. She left the less powerful, less privileged women and girls behind. Because feminism just ain’t fun.
And so, she regressed back into the cave where Pre-2015 Megyn lived, complacent in patriarchy as long as it helped her get her way. At first, she wrote a memoir about how she became the Megyn Kelly we all know and love, highlighting that she doesn’t define herself as a feminist because if women just had tougher skin, they’d be okay. Just stop talking about gender to please men and conservatives who hate identity politics, and you’ll be okay. So fun. So easy. Then, when she moved to NBC for a morning talk show, she tried so hard to be non-partisan, to just be Fun Megyn, that she did fabulously fun things like wonder why parading women in itty bitty bikinis wasn’t a good way to judge beauty, ask a fan of the television show Will and Grace whether he became gay to match his favorite fictional character, make rude comments to Jane Fonda about plastic surgery, and last but certainly not least, wonder why blackface and Halloween isn’t a good idea.
And so, America has responded back with “eh.”
Bye, Meg. I’ll go find a better feminist to root for. It won’t be too hard.