SUNSHINE SUPER(WO)MAN- ROBIN MEADE ON SELF ESTEEM, CONFIDENCE & EMBRACING YOUR INNER BITCH
by Bret Love
As the perennially perky host of HLN’s Morning Express, Robin Meade would seem to have it all: She’s funny, informed and drop-dead gorgeous. But as the former Miss Ohio explains in her new book, Morning, Sunshine, she wasn’t always so well put-together. Before landing an anchor job with the network then known as CNN’s Headline News, Meade suffered a series of anxious panic attacks that nearly derailed her career. Now, having conquered her own self-esteem issues, she’s on a mission to help others do the same. We recently sat down with the 40-year-old hottie for a candid talk that covered everything from growing up the daughter of a minister to being named “Sexiest Newscaster” in Playboy poll.
What was your childhood like, growing up in small-town Ohio?
I think the small-town lifestyle definitely had a big impact on my confidence level. When you grow up in a small town, you don’t get away with anything because it always gets back to your parents. My town was so small, we were allowed to go out for lunch downtown at the pizza joint and come back to school, and they trusted us to come back on time. It was so small, there were never enough kids for all the extracurricular activities, so you got to do whatever you wanted and never had to worry about being cut. That’s really good for your self-esteem! (Laughs)
How did your father being a minister impact you?
Well, he was an associate minister, but he refused pay. During the week he worked in a factory as a full-time manual laborer, and my mom worked in a different manufacturing plant as a manager. So I would get the union line from him and the managerial line from her, which really taught me to be balanced in how I viewed things. So now job I know that there are always two sides to every story, because I grew up seeing it in my own household.
When did you first realize you wanted to get into news?
My senior year of high school I took an aptitude test and the results showed that I was all about creative writing and reading comprehension. At the bottom it asked in what field you’d like to use these traits, but I didn’t know what to write. My friend had gotten similar results, and she wrote down that she wanted to be a broadcast news journalist. I thought that was a great idea, so that’s what I wrote down. Isn’t that terrible? (Laughs) I’d always asked a lot of questions and had a knack for making people feel comfortable talking about themselves, which played very well into this field. I remember when I entered a Junior Miss pageant and wrote down that I wanted to follow in Diane Sawyer’s footsteps, and my mom was like, “Honey, let’s write down something a bit more realistic!” It seemed like such a foreign idea for this kid from a cornfield to be like, “I wanna be on TV!”
Do you think being a beauty pageant winner helped or hindered your effort to break into the field?
It definitely helped me break into the field. I was competing for the title of Miss Ohio, and my first job was at a TV station that also happened to broadcast the pageant. So when I went in for my interview, the general manager already recognized me and gave me the chance of a lifetime. They had a TV station and an AM and FM radio station, and when you worked there you did it all. I carried my own camera, shot my own stories, edited them to create radio and TV versions… it was the single best learning experience about the mechanics of TV journalism. Then, when I won Miss Ohio in 1992, I got a job as an anchor at a station in Cleveland. So it definitely helped me break in, but I don’t think it did me any favors as far as being taken seriously, and by the time I got to Chicago I’d learned to just shut up about it! (Laughs)
What made you decide to write Morning, Sunshine at this juncture in your career?
One of the editors at the book company actually came to me because she liked the show and had a feeling there was more to me than meets the eye. She asked if I’d like to write a book and, if so, what I would write about. When I thought about what would have meaning for my viewers, I thought about trying to get through my panic attacks because it caused me to really examine myself. So many people see people on TV or in their office and think, “Oh, they’ve got it so easy!” because the grass is always greener on the other side. But I think if we as human beings could learn to talk about our problems, we’d know that life’s path is not always easy and get rid of the stigma that surrounds anxiety.
You talk about embracing your inner bitch: How do you suppress that desire to be liked all the time, and where do you draw the line as far as being TOO bitchy?
(Laughs) When I say embrace your inner bitch, it doesn’t mean I think we should zoom down and strike our neighbors with lightning bolts. It’s an internal thing: People-pleasers, when they stand up for themselves, have an immediate fear of the repercussions instead of just saying no. If you are going to stand up, draw a line and set boundaries, you have to learn to live with that and stop second-guessing yourself. You have to think, “Okay, they’re not gonna like me now, but what are the benefits of them not liking me?” Which is a tough thing for a people-pleaser to do.
Finding balance is something a lot of people wrestle with. How do you know when you find it, or is it constant struggle that never really resolves itself?
Whenever I come to a place of conflict or decision-making in my own life, I recognize the pendulum in my brain that goes back and forth, considering the good and bad of each decision. Once you can make it be still and come to the middle, you’ve balanced your thought process. You have to do the same thing with yourself: You’re not all good, you’re not all bad, you just are who you are. As far as balancing time, I think it’s constantly changing. But if you recognize that life isn’t all about work and it isn’t all about your marriage or your kids, then you’re finding that balance.
Everything you write about in the book is great, but some people may look at you– former Miss Ohio, voted sexiest newscaster by Playboy readers– and wonder you could relate to what the average girl is going through. What would you say to them?
Well, self-esteem isn’t always about your appearance. For me, it was about being liked and being likeable. I completely understand that someone could say, “You work in a visual medium, how can you not be confident?” But that has nothing to do with the inner turmoil of the soul and the brain. No matter what the roots of your self-esteem issues are, I think it helps to learn how to make a better assessment of yourself. You have to balance the things you don’t like about yourself with an honest assessment of the things you’re good at. I could be the simplest thing, but if you have some things you are confident about it can help you realize that the thing you aren’t confident about is not the whole of your being.
As a guy, I'm curious what we can do to help when our wives or girlfriends are wrestling with issues of confidence and self-esteem?
My husband actually took an extreme measure and went to his chiropractor, who said she helped people with mental breakthroughs, and said, “Oh my god, she needs help!” And thank goodness he did, because now we have this story and we can tell the rest of the world and hopefully it helps other people. But I think you can tell someone about all the positive things you see that they should be confident about, and it doesn’t have to be about their appearance. In fact, sometimes it’s better if it’s not. Once they write out all the reasons they have to be confident, it can bring their opinions of themselves up. So it’s really all about encouraging them and just being a good listener.
What do you hope people will get out of reading the book?
I hope they’ll understand that just because someone is a public figure, it doesn’t mean their life is a fairy tale. We can all learn something from each other. But most of all I hope that the little confidence-boosters I have in there can help them examine why they don’t have confidence. I hope they’ll emerge from it a better person, feeling better about themselves.
(originally appeared in INsite Magazine)
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