Megyn Kelly Gets a Taste of the Conservative Women Audience She’s Spent Years Cultivating

On Monday, Kelly tweeted that women should be financially independent. And her base, who she's trained to despise any drop of perceived feminism, went for her throat.

By Kylie Cheung  |  February 18, 2025 | 1:22pm
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Megyn Kelly Gets a Taste of the Conservative Women Audience She’s Spent Years Cultivating

Megyn Kelly, best known for such takes as “Santa is white,” and enthusiastically endorsing for president a man who once publicly accused her of being on her period for asking him a question, very rarely hops on Twitter with normal opinions. Yet, on Monday, she shared a rare, normal-ish take: that women should probably pursue some degree of financial independence. Of course, because she’s still an overbearing right-winger, she stressed the importance of ultimately marrying and having kids. “Ladies, it is possible to make your own money, have your own career, pay for your own swanky nyc apartment (etc), AND find a man who loves you, wants to have & raise kids w/you & wants to be w/you and only you,” she wrote. “The only thing stopping you? Your decision to settle for less.”

Simple enough, right? Still, I should have anticipated the outraged reaction from the conservative base Kelly has spent decades training to despise any amount of perceived feminism. Stephanie Hamill, a former anchor of the far-right propaganda channel One America News, quote-tweeted Kelly’s post, prefacing it by describing herself as a “regular listener” of Kelly’s podcast: “I’m a month out from giving birth and I have a toddler. I can assure you, I’m not in boss babe mode,” Hamill puzzlingly wrote. 

I’m genuinely astounded by how frequently the term “boss babe” emerges in the cesspool of replies from offended right-wing women under Kelly’s tweet. They’re ostensibly mocking feminist women, but… I don’t know a single person who uses that phrase except the conservative women yelling at Kelly who are wearing skinny jeans in 2025 and filling in their eyebrows with Sharpie markers. In either case, the insinuation here, I presume, is that being a woman and not wanting to be homeless in the absence of a husband is embarrassing and we should all point and laugh. Ha ha ha!

Back to Hamill’s post: “Just guessing this tweet was in response to the Ashely St. Clair / Elon Baby drama? All babies are blessings—it’s better to have babies with your husband and someone exclusively devoted to you,” she continued, throwing a major stray at their fellow conservative gal-fluencer. Hamill concludes by asking a slew of prying questions about Kelly’s childcare system and who cooks Thanksgiving dinner at her home, even though Thanksgiving isn’t for another nine months.

Another account that appears to be some sort of “trad wife” influencer quote-tweeted Kelly’s post, warning young women that “if you follow this path you will be single and alone at 35 scrambling to try to find a good guy to settle down with to finally have kids only to find that there are none left.” The top reply came from a user named Jeanna Hoch, who, herself, appears to be a business owner: “Not wanting to be a boss babe is not settling for less. My kids were raised by me, not a nanny or daycare. It’s ok to find a man who wants to provide for his family.” 

One reply from a male conservative influencer reads, “This is the exact mentality creating an epidemic of single and childless women,” as if not marrying and being abused by some shitty conservative man who can probably barely pay his own bills let alone yours is a fate worse than death. 

Reading even a small sampling of the thousands of replies is like staring into an abyss of anti-intellectualism, an orgy of primal, caveman levels of misogyny. Another male conservative influencer told Kelly, “A thousand unborn babies are really mad at you right now.” Ah, yes: unborn babies, famously sentient and thinking about… Megyn Kelly. Other popular replies bemoan that “this mindset is actually keeping a lot of women single,” and “Competent men do not want to deal with the type of woman with everything you state.”

The misogyny—internalized and overt—of it all is one thing, but there are layers to how stupid (and sad) all of this is, so I’ll try my best to unpeel them. Interspersed with all the vile responses mocking single women, here and there, some women raised that they simply can’t afford to work and raise their children, which is a very real issue. But in lieu of advocating for government-subsidized child care or other supports for working parents, conservatives are overwhelmingly just pressuring women to stay home, and demonizing those who can’t or don’t want to.

Also, the olden customs and traditions that conservatives are glorifying simply don’t exist anymore. By that, I mean the average American family can no longer raise kids and pay bills on a single income. In this economy, the notion that some wealthy, handsome oligarch who can afford both eggs and your health insurance premiums is coming to save you is pure fan fiction written by very rich “trad” influencers on TikTok. Whatever your gender, for most of us, the simple reality is that if we don’t work, we will die. And, not to be a “boss babe,” but I would like to avoid that!

Lest anyone needs a 101 primer in feminist history, there are some pretty vital reasons feminists historically fought so hard for women to be able to open our own bank accounts or hold jobs. In the absence of those rights, our options were to be sold off by our dads to the highest bidder, and likely lobotomized if our husbands ever came home and dinner wasn’t ready. You don’t have to love working or aspire to be the first female president to understand that the alternative—total financial dependence on a man who could discard and abuse you—is regressive and dangerous. And, I repeat: in this economy, a single-income household is also pretty unlikely!

All of that said, I hardly feel that sorry for Kelly as hoards of right-wingers pile on her. When you spend this many years debasing women broadly—endorsing attacks on our fundamental rights, platforming and embracing sexual predators and neo-Nazis who see us as subhuman—this is a pretty logical outcome.

 
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