Fox's Brian Kilmeade Advises Women Lawyers To Use Their “Great Body” To Get Ahead In Court

During a segment of Fox News' The Five, guest co-host Brian Kilmeade continued his history of sexism while discussing a blog post by a federal judge who wrote about the attire of women lawyers in the courtroom.

In a March 25 blog post, U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf called himself a “dirty old man” while offering three rules for young women lawyers to follow when considering how to dress for court. In the post, he comments on the “ample chest” of one such lawyer and advises others to “tone it down” so that law clerks won't label you “an ignorant slut”:

Around these parts there is a wonderfully talented and very pretty female lawyer who is in her late twenties. She is brilliant, she writes well, she speaks eloquently, she is zealous but not overly so, she is always prepared, she treats others, including her opponents, with civility and respect, she wears very short skirts and shows lots of her ample chest. I especially appreciate the last two attributes.

In a recent case involving this fine young lawyer every female law clerk in the building slipped in and out of the courtroom to observe her. I am not exaggerating. I later learned that word had gotten around about this lawyer's dress. Acknowledging that the lawyer was really good, the consensus of the sisterhood was uniformly critical. “Unprofessional” was the word used most often. To a woman, the law clerks seethed and sneered. They were truly upset.

From the foregoing, and in my continuing effort to educate the bar, I have three rules that young women lawyers should follow when considering how to dress for court:

1. You can't win. Men are both pigs and prudes. Get over it.

2. It is not about you. That goes double when you are appearing in front of a jury.

3. Think about the female law clerks. If they are likely to label you, like Jane Curtin, an ignorant slut behind your back, tone it down.

Slate's Amanda Hess reminded Kopf that as a federal judge, “he's responsible for making sure that his personal weaknesses don't interfere with his judgment and that he refrain from making statements that would reasonably make one type of attorney feel uncomfortable approaching his bench.”

During the March 27 edition of Fox News' The Five, the show's co-hosts agreed the judge “had a point” in harshly criticizing the attire of young women in the courtroom. Brian Kilmeade then asserted that women should in fact use their assets such as “a great body and a great figure” to get ahead in the courtroom:

KILMEADE: If you could try a case, and you have an asset which is a great body and a great figure, you've got to do everything you can to be successful. So if it means somebody in the jury is going to be swung to your side because of the fact that you work out ... then go ahead and do it.

This isn't the first time Brian Kilmeade has commented on women's appearances in the workplace. During a November 16, 2012 segment of his radio show, Kilmeade told listeners that Fox finds female hosts by going “into the Victoria's Secret catalogue” and saying “can any of these people talk?”

Kilmeade also has a history of other sexist behavior on air that once even prompted then-Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson to walk off-set after commenting that “women are everywhere. We're letting them play golf and tennis now” and later telling viewers that he is “pretty much not sexist.”

Kilmeade's statement fits nicely into the long pattern of The Five's co-hosts using the show in order to perpetuate sexism and attack women.