Joy Behar confessed that her hair once get in the way of her career on this morning’s episode of The View. The longtime co-host looked back on the days before her TV stardom when she worked as a receptionist, telling her fellow View panelists that she lost an on-camera gig when she failed to blow out her curls.
Her admission came during a Hot Topics discussion about physical appearance affecting the chances of a candidate landing a job. During the chat, Behar said she was working as a receptionist at Good Morning America when she had the chance to be on the show.
“I had like an afro sort of hair,” she said, before showing off an old photo of herself and her voluminous locks for The View audience to see.
She then explained that the GMA executive producer at the time had wanted her on TV because he thought she was “funny,” but her time to shine never came.
“They never put me on, and so another person over there said, ‘If you had blown your hair out’ — ’cause one day I came in with it straightened out, you know with some Agent Orange I used — and he said, ‘If you had worn your hair like that, they would have put you on television.’ It’s very discriminatory,” Behar said.
And she wasn’t the only one on the panel whose hair had influenced her work life. Sunny Hostin said she, too, had been pressured to straighten her naturally curly hair, which she said had “become an issue” in both her legal and TV careers.
“I don’t know how to blow my hair out,” she told her co-hosts, before adding, “I’ve been told many times that curly hair is unprofessional and that I should make a change.”
She then recalled her experience working as a legal analyst at CNN, where she was employed before joining The View. While at the network, she once received a call from an executive who told her to stick with straightened hair.
“One day, I let one of the stylists blow out my hair for CNN. I got a call from an executive that same day [who] said, ‘You found your look. Don’t change it,'” Hostin said.
Behar then speculated what The View audience would do if she and her co-hosts didn’t sit through hair and makeup before each live show.
“If we came out here without makeup, people would be scared,” Behar quipped, and Hostin agreed, shouting out their hair and makeup team as “the best glam squad in the country.” Still, Behar quickly clarified, “Not Whoopi [Goldberg],” who prefers to go barefaced.
And Goldberg defended her choice: “People always say, how come you don’t wear makeup? I say, because who has time? I don’t have two hours to fool around,” she proclaimed. “Either you like this or you don’t. I don’t have to be here.”
The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.