Settle for More

by Megyn Kelly

“Mom, am I really smart?” I asked her once. “You’re about average,” she said.

No one thought it was a problem. They didn’t even put sunscreen on me. For the love of God, have you seen how pale I am?

Alone and terribly sad, I felt too ashamed to discuss it with my parents, and was powerless to change my reality at school.

standing by your principles is always the right call, even when dealing with people in positions of power.

The cost, though, was brutal. For months, I hadn’t seen anyone except co-workers. I had blown off friends’ weddings. I cried a lot. I was sleepless, and sad, and lonely.

The value of hard work, that other tentpole of my existence, had stood me in good stead up until that point, but it had taken me as far as I could go without a new value: meaning.

I learned something: the messages in your head are not always well founded.

But the writing was on the wall, as you could see in my journal at the time:

Do we really have to keep seeing your journal entries??

I’ll never forget that moment, as it opened my eyes to the reality that two people can see the exact same facts and come to vastly different conclusions about what they mean based on their life experience.

“Is this just math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better? Or is this real?”

Hard same

My problem with the word feminist is that it’s exclusionary and alienating.

It is those things to you specifically because you're supporting the idea that it has to mean those things. Feminists come from all walks of life; don't try to generalize what it means to be a feminist.

But in my own experience, the most effective way to get opportunities is with performance, not persistence.

Try graduating in the worst job market since the depression. Persistence can pay off, too.

Trump was amazing TV, but what was the cost of giving him all that time, when we knew damn well we weren’t about to do the same for Jeb Bush or Scott Walker? Tom and I agreed: no more gratuitous Trump coverage.

I tried to laugh off the inappropriate comments, or pretend not to understand them, or to redirect the conversation to something work related, but I was deeply concerned. It was an upsetting, impossible dynamic.

And yet if it started in 2005 you put up with it for over 10 years? EDIT: She later says her boss took a 9 year hiatus on HR violations (with her anyway)

One thing I would like to see is every corporation with a compliance director who does not depend on the CEO for his or her paycheck, who could receive reports about the boss like these.

Preach

As for the attempts to blame the victims for not speaking out sooner, it is management’s job, not that of the employees, to ensure that a company has ethical leaders who comply with the law, and to make certain that women feel safe to report any incident.

YES. IT. IS. And yet many companies seem perfectly happy to take no accountability for ethical violations.

The bottom line is: the more we criticize harassment victims for their understandable reluctance to go on the record, the more women we’ll shame into silence forever.

And what “more” means at age twenty-five is different from what it means at forty-five; when you’re starting out in your career versus when you’re established; when you’re single and unmarried versus when you’re married with children.