Gretchen Carlson’s then eight-year-old daughter came home from school one day and asked her mom if she was Miss America. Carlson went over to the closet, withdrew a worn box, and pulled out her pageant ribbon. Carlson had never told her.
Carlson wanted her daughter to grow up and be her own person, and didn’t want her to feel pressured to be just like her.
The former Miss America and Fox News host of The Real Story shares this story and many others in her new book Getting Real, which she promoted at Washington, D.C., bookstore Politics & Prose Tuesday night.
"The number one quality people want from TV journalists is trust and reliability," Carlson said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon. "It’s one of the reasons I wrote Getting Real. Sometimes people look at people on television and think they have never had any issues. My life is far from that, I’ve had pain and shame like many others."
For example, Carlson writes about being bullied as child for being "the chubby kid."
"My mom was an amazing cook, which definitely didn’t help," Carlson said to the crowd of a couple dozen fans. "When my mom left me home with my babysitter, [former Minnesota Congresswoman] Michele Bachmann, she’d tell her not to let me get into the leftovers. When she left, Michele would say, ‘Let’s go get them and the grape soda too!"
Carlson decided one day that she was tired of the teasing and lost 35 pounds before going to college. While she was at Stanford, her mother called her up because she saw an advertisement for the Ms. America pageant. Half of the score was based on talent, and Carlson was an accomplished concert violinist.
Carlson put in hours of practice. She continued getting fit, brushed up on her musical talent, and played Zigeunerweisen, the violin composition of Sarasate at the competition. She was crowned Miss America in 1989 and immediately hit with criticism.
"I have faced a lot of discrimination for accomplishments in my life," Carlson said. "It was within less than a day of becoming Miss America that people started hating me and tried to take me down. I learned to build tough skin."
The 2015 Miss America, Kira Kazantsev, showed up to Carlson’s book promotion Tuesday night to praise Carlson for being a great example for young women.
"Gretchen has had me on the show a few times and she has been really supportive of the program," Kazantsev told the Free Beacon. "Beyond that, a lot of Miss Americas struggle with what’s next. Her career has been incredible and impactful, it gives me encouragement that Miss America can always be a part of who I am, but I can move on and have a career as Kira."
After winning Miss America, Carlson planned on attending law school. She never considered going into journalism, until a prank gave her the opportunity to be on television.
"I was on a prank show from the ’80s hosted by Dick Clark and Ed McMahon called ‘TV'sBloopers & Practical Jokes’," Carlson said. "They made me think I was introducing a live broadcast for a satellite system to a bunch of scientists named after the Miss America pageant. I was supposed to give my two-minute Miss America talk, and that was it. But they made me stall until the speakers came."
Carlson had to speak for 15 minutes regarding a satellite that she new nothing about. When she was notified that it was a prank and it aired several months later, she received notable attention.
"After it aired I got called by agents saying I should do television. They said, ‘If you can do that, and talk for that long unprepared you can do television.’"
Knowing that her LSAT’s were good for five years, she took a chance and broke into media. Getting Real details Carlson’s career from CBS, to Fox & Friends, and then her own show. She overcame a lot to get there, but even at her peak still received insult.
"I coined the phrase that I had reached the ‘bimbo trifecta’," Carlson said. "People just wrote me off as dumb, and forgot that I had attended Stanford, Oxford, and was a high school valedictorian."
Carlson said she hoped her experiences with infertility, sexual harassment, and a life-threatening stalker would be inspirational to all.
"During these struggles in my life, my faith was a constant, sometimes it was the only thing to hold on to," Carlson said. "We all feel inadequate in our own ways, and I just want people to know I have been there, and that they can overcome them and succeed."