Roger Ailes values the visual—he has said he watches the news with the sound off—and the women of Fox News seem to provide just the type of eye candy that millions of male viewers want. While these bizarrely beautiful newswomen are fun to watch and quite accomplished as a group, many with advanced degrees from prestigious universities, make no mistake, their sexuality is the stuff of poems and fan sites and country songs. And as the years roll by and the ratings climb, the women just get foxier.
In the Ailes biography released this year, Megyn Kelly said, “It is a credit to Roger and his makeup and hairdressing team that the women at Fox have such an ‘it’ factor…The whole day at Fox is cast by Roger.” The queen bee of Fox News didn’t always have “it,” though. The transformation from her early days shows Megyn has come a long way. But don’t be fooled: Megyn’s fembot looks are backed up by moxie. She was a practicing attorney in her former life, and while still she may not consider herself a feminist, the anchor who describes her look as “professional glam” has become the network’s strongest advocate for women. The Internet did a collective high-five last week after Kelly’s forceful on-air repudiation of the sexist rants of her more conservative counterpart, Erick Erickson. Grilling Erickson on his opinion that women belong in the home, Kelly asked, “What makes you dominant and me submissive?”
Martha MacCallum anchors America’s Newsroom, one of the Fox shows that forgoes the anchor desk seen on other networks, and if the number of Internet videos highlighting her gams is any gauge, we’re guessing viewers are just fine with that. Fox wasn’t this Jersey girl’s first news gig; she’s a seasoned business reporter who worked at CNBC and anchored The Wall Street Journal Report. And she’s gorgeous, but her perfect skin and long blonde locks belie her age. At 49, MacCallum is one of the more mature women at Fox.
Shocking but true: before Jenna Lee became an anchor on Fox’s Happening Now, she was a humble Columbia Journalism School grad who aspired to write—gross! In a 2011 interview, Ailes said Lee “didn’t look anything like she looks now when she came here…I met with her and sent her down to hair and makeup to clean her up a little. When she came back, I took a look at her and said, ‘What would you think of going on air?’ I had to work with her a little to bring her pitch down, and now she’s going to be a big star. And she wanted to be a writer.”
The Fox Report Weekend host is a six-time Emmy-winning journalist with more than 20 years in the business, and she’s also one of the network’s few anchors of color. Towering over her colleagues at 5-foot-9, the career newswoman and mother of two feels no pressure to downplay her femininity, telling Allure, “My signature 5- to 5-and-a-half-inch heels…make me feel feminine and fierce.” Seemingly responding to the charge that she’s just a pretty face, Faulkner said in an interview earlier this year, “I’d like to think I was chosen on my merits. Fox is number one. They could put anyone on. Everybody wants to work at Fox. To be chosen means that I must be good at what I do.”
Gretchen Carlson is a classical violinist and former Miss America—not Miss USA, Donald Trump’s more scandal-plagued beauty contest, the Stanford University alum is quick to remind us. There has been some talk in recent years that the peppy cohost of the network’s morning show, Fox and Friends, is tired of playing the “dumb-blonde” role. Last year, she walked off the set after a sexist joke from cohost Brian Kilmeade, telling him, “You know what? You read the headlines, since men are so great. Go ahead.”
Jamie Colby makes us feel bad about ourselves. While other teenagers were roaming the mall or standing in line to see Raiders of the Lost Ark, 14-year-old Colby was studying business administration at the University of Miami—and by 22, she had earned a J.D. from the school of law there. She traded in her suits for her signature plunging sweetheart necklines, shelving a professorship and a private practice for a career in journalism, for which she’s won several awards, including the Edward R. Murrow National Award in 2002 for coverage of the 9/11 attacks.
Marion Curtis/Starpix, via AP
Guilfoyle is a former prosecutor turned TV legal analyst, one of the cohosts of Fox’s newest and most fun shows, The Five. She’s also, um…a former lingerie model, according to the New York Daily News.
Political commentator Andrea Tantaros is young, beautiful, and fired up, as one of the most conservative hosts in The Five lineup and on the network in general. She told listeners of her radio show last month that, should they see any Obama voters, to “punch them in the face.”
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Camerota, co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend, considered a career in law, but, inspired by The Phil Donahue Show, decided to pursue her journalism dreams. A mother of three, Camerota uses a one-two-three timeout method with her brood, a tactic she might want to employ with her more immature coworkers: when cohost Brian Kilmeade joked on his radio show that the women of Fox were scouted by flipping through the Victoria’s Secret catalogue and asking, “Can any of these people talk?” Camerota politely purred, “You’re so crazy, Brian.” Ha…ha…ha.
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Ultra-conservative pundit and Fox News contributor Monica Crowley was with the network on Day 1, when the sparse set consisted of a single chair, one cameraman, and evidently no hair and makeup department (3:40 into the video)—at least certainly not the magic-makers who work there today. The self-described “happy warrior,” enamored with Reagan at the tender age of 11 (who wasn’t, really?), went on serve as the foreign-policy adviser to an aging President Nixon and earn two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in international affairs from Columbia University. Not too shabby. She also made a beautiful buffer between Bill O’Reilly and Alan Colmes during a heated exchange earlier this year.
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