When Fox News personality Eboni K. Williams was a young attorney in North Carolina, she grappled with molding her professional image.
On one hand, she was a former beauty queen who knew her way around a makeup bag and a flashy wardrobe. But she was also a determined, enterprising student who graduated from Loyola University law school at 23.
“I really struggled with reconciling caring about what I look like — because it matters, particularly as a woman — and being professional and very aggressive in my ambition,” Williams tells The Post. “I felt like a walking conflict.”
It’s a quandary she tackles in “Pretty Powerful: Appearance, Substance and Success” (Viva Editions, out Sept. 12). The 33-year-old, who currently co-hosts “The Fox News Specialists,” ultimately embraced both sides of her personality and entered the courtroom pageant-polished, earning the nickname “Barbie lawyer” from fellow lawyers and judges.
But the moniker didn’t faze her. Rather, she found it empowering.
“I had a female mentor who told me it was OK to be concerned with my aesthetic. It was actually beneficial to my clients,” Williams says, noting she stood out for all of the right reasons.
“You are always representing something at all times with your appearance,” she says. “[Whether it’s] your client or business entity.”
To build her “Pretty Powerful” case for the importance of looks in the workplace, she interviewed successful women such as former White House social secretary Desirée Rogers, O.J. Simpson prosector Marcia Clark, political commentator and lobbyist Monica Crowley, and Fox News’ Meghan McCain about embracing femininity, style and smarts to forge ahead at work. They all explore the roles appearance have played in their career trajectories: Rogers was deemed too stylish (she wore edgy Comme des Garçons) for stodgy Washington; Clark had the credentials but not the ideal look, including frumpy hair and bland suits; and McCain was ridiculed for being plus-sized.
Success comes from finding balance, says Williams: “A marriage of [style and substance] at the maximum levels really yields incredible results.”
In other words, women shouldn’t fear using their looks to help them get ahead. She argues that an appealing appearance won’t diminish a woman’s intellectual value, but help her highlight positive aspects, such as her hustle, her fancy degree or her years of work experience.
“Grab the attention of everyone in the room with your physical presentation,” she says, “and then blow [them] out of the water — via a job interview, work presentation or trial argument — with what you say.”
‘Grab the attention of everyone in the room with your physical presentation and then blow [them] out of the water.’
Given that she works for a network famous for its roster of glossy babes in Skittles-colored dresses, Williams expects criticism for her view that being pretty is paramount.
“I think if they just read the title [they’ll find it controversial]. The initial reaction will be, ‘Yeah, a beauty queen who works at Fox News,’” she says. “But let’s go deeper.”
Williams, who learned to “package” herself as a child, believes being interested in superficiality isn’t superficial.
Raised in North Carolina by a self-employed single mother, she got involved in pageants for scholarship opportunities. Her mother dressed her in a preppy uniform of khaki shorts, polo shirts and penny loafers, so she looked like a serious student.
While driving a school bus as a side job in exclusive neighborhoods, Williams’ mother noticed kids there had orthodontic work, and decided to invest in braces for her daughter.
“We definitely ate Hot Pockets and Hamburger Helper most nights so Mom could spend $3,000 out of pocket for my braces,” she says. “Even though we didn’t have means, she understood intrinsically the value of pretty power.”
Williams turned “pretty power” into her mantra. After practicing law for a few years, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in media. Without a steady job, she waited tables and took on hourly legal work to make ends meet. Even though she was skint, she prioritized her looks.
“I was vigilant [about my beauty],” she says, revealing that she had issues with acne. “I struggled financially but $30 moisturizer and SPF felt non-negotiable.”
She was also vigilant about her burgeoning career in television. She pounded on doors and took any unpaid opportunity to be on camera and build a reel (an audition tape). She eventually landed a gig at CBS News as a news correspondent anchoring the overnight news and providing legal analysis. In 2013, she made her Fox News debut on “The O’Reilly Factor” and became a regular talking head at the network.
“I can never know the exact determining factor in being extended that offer, but I am certain if I didn’t ‘look the part,’ I would not have had the opportunity to have that conversation about my other, more merit-based qualifications,” she writes in her book.
How does she harness her own “pretty power” today?
“You can see influence from my pageant experience,” says Williams, referring to her measured speech cadence, straight posture and voluminous hair. She’s into “respecting my body’s proportions” and chooses attire accordingly — often eschewing shoes with ankle straps that “cut off the leg,” in favor of sleek pumps that “elongate the lines” of her physique.
When it comes to makeup, “I do try to find opportunities for personal expression,” she says. “I like to show a little color, like a statement lip.” But she insists that she doesn’t go down the “slippery slope” of too much physical maintenance, not wanting to get “obsessed [with] someone else’s standard of beauty.”
One beauty non-negotiable for her is wearing hair extensions for tapings during the week, but not on the weekends.
“I was so opposed to being another black woman wearing extensions on television until I burned my hair off — I was relaxing and flat-ironing my hair every single day,” she says. “If you flat-ironed natural hair Monday through Friday, you wouldn’t have natural hair. Hopefully, we’re at a place in society where it’s OK to admit that.”
Ultimately, Williams believes it’s best to find and embrace your comfort zone — whether that means being ladylike, polished, glamorous or tomboyish.
“We need to give ourselves permission to get comfortable with ourselves,” she says.
But don’t conflate being comfortable with being inappropriate. In July, a controversy was sparked when a female journalist was barred from the DC Capitol building’s Speaker’s Lobby for wearing a sleeveless dress.
“I think that was completely fair to have those rules. I remember on [law-school] campus interviews, if you didn’t have your navy or black suit, closed-toe pumps, you weren’t permitted to go on interviews,” she says, adding that men have similarly restrictive sartorial guidelines, including the requirement to wear suits. “I respect the environment’s ability to dictate what’s appropriate. We’ve had this cavalier attitude in society — that we don’t want to be told anything, and I think that doesn’t serve us well.”
Williams concedes that in a perfect world, looks wouldn’t matter. But that’s not the world we live in.
“Everything that I’ve heard about feminist theory is rejecting that appearance matters … That women shouldn’t be evaluated on what we look like,” she says. “Until the playing field is completely leveled, I’m looking for those opportunities we can take, [in this] rigged system so to speak, and work it in our favor. We should be jumping at the chance to give ourselves an advantage.”
Williams shows us how to maneuver your way through your career in style.
How are these woman living up to their style and substance potential? Williams weighs in.
