Gretchen Carlson Takes Off Her Makeup Because Female Empowerment

Calling it a “cable news first,” Gretchen Carlson hosted a segment of her Fox News show The Real Story completely “sans makeup” on Friday. Carlson used her raw face as a teachable moment for all those young girls out there who were definitely at home watching at 2 pm EST on a weekday about the importance of valuing what’s inside their bodies, not what’s sitting on top of their epidermis.

“Sex sells, but to eight-year-old girls, these days, it’s not easy to empower your tween daughter to become a confident young woman,” said Carlson, probably inwardly cursing her segment producer because that sentence made zero sense. She then interviewed Jodi Norgaard, the CEO of Dream Big Toy Company that apparently sells products that are empowering for young women. They spoke for a whole three minutes, discussing how young women are sexualized in our country by mentioning Bratz dolls and Abercrombie & Fitch push-up bikinis.

Carlson looked very serious and mildly fearful during the whole segment, a far cry from the experience of watching her NBC daytime counterparts Hoda and Kathie Lee take off their own makeup. “The message here – and this is what I always tell people and I’ll probably get flack for being Miss America and then talking about self-esteem – but the bottom line is that you have to build yourself from the inside up,” she said before cutting to commercial and presumably putting all that spackle back on.

Gretchen Carlson Goes Makeup-Free in Segment on Empowering Young Girls [Fox News]