Fox Sports has been rocked by a recent lawsuit filed by a former hairstylist, Noushin Faraji, which includes damning allegations about some of the network’s most well-known on-air talent and high-ranking executives. 

 

Noushin is seeking unspecified damages from former host Skip Bayless, Fox Sports and Fox Corporation after alleging that she endured continuous unwanted sexual advances from Skip between 2017 through to last year. She says the advances included long hugs, cheek kisses, "putting his body against hers and pressing against her breasts" and remarks from Skip about how he could “change her life” if she slept with him. She says she was offered $1.5 million by Skip to sleep with him. 

 

Her complaint goes on to allege that executives at Fox fostered a hostile work environment, where she and other colleagues were "forced to endure a misogynistic, racist, and ableist workplace where executives and talent were allowed to physically and verbally abuse workers with impunity".

Despite the severity of the claims, and the company having a history of sexual assault allegations which led to the dismissal of its head of sports programming, Jamie Horowitz, in 2017, along with chairman and CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes the year prior, the narrative on social media and even in media coverage has completely bypassed the more serious allegations about the sexual harassment Noushin says she endured, and have become laser focused instead on claims made about Joy Taylor, a female host who is mentioned in the lawsuit. 

 

The lawsuit suggests that Joy Taylor and Emmanuel Acho had a sexual relationship in 2020, and that Joy told Noushin to “get over it” when she confided in her and shared the alleged harassment she says she had been experiencing from vice president of content, Charlie Dixon. Noushin says Joy was sleeping with Emmanuel and Charlie at the same time and said she had plans to report Charlie’s misconduct to Fox Sports "once [he] was no longer useful to her."

The lawsuit goes on to suggest that Joy told Noushin she was given her role as moderator on Skip and Shannon: Undisputed, which was objected to by Skip, as a direct result of her relationship with Charlie, a relationship her then-husband found evidence of prior to filing for divorce. Noushin also says Charlie paid off Joy’s second husband to stay quiet.

While the lawsuit certainly highlights a lot of mess happening behind closed doors at Fox Sports, unfortunately, we’ve seen this level of mess before. Whether it’s disturbing allegations of sexual harassment, which we’ve seen everywhere from the political sphere to other networks, or the repercussions the women reporting it face, it’s not uncommon for the narrative to conveniently shift away from the bad behaviour of the alleged perpetrators and focus instead on the salacious aspects of any given lawsuit or scandal, mostly at the expense of women.

 

And we can draw a comparison here between what we’re seeing unfold over at Fox Sports as it pertains to the redirecting of the focus of the lawsuit and what we’ve seen unfold in the midst of Blake Lively’s legal action against It Ends With Us director, Justin Baldoni. 

Blake Lively’s lawsuit against Baldoni is illustrating the impact of a woman’s likeability and whether she meets the standards of “the perfect victim” in order to be believed. 

The claims about Joy’s sexual relationships with Emmanuel and Skip, whether true or not, were not the point of the lawsuit. Yet most of the online conversation has become completely dominated by Joy’s mention, with memes and GIFs becoming common responses to posts and tweets about the lawsuit. In fact, the only meme I’ve seen come out of this that has been remotely appropriate is this one:

 

This is one of the reasons I fell in love with a social media account called @guidedinspiration. Rather than join in on the pile on, this creator posts videos of her breaking down body language in different interactions between celebrities, stars of reality shows and the like, offering context and background on why someone may be conducting themselves in a certain way. Which brings us back to the question of how we treat women in sport. Whether we’re referring to the treatment of the hair stylists ensuring the men and women reporting on sports look presentable for TV. Whether we’re referring to the women who analyze and moderate sport segments and chats. Whether we’re referring to the very women who play sports. This is another opportunity for us to examine how we treat women, not only in sport, but in society. 

 

And nothing highlights the need for that re-examination more than former Fox columnist Jason Whitlock’s addressing of the lawsuit on his show, Fearless with Jason Whitlock. He revealed a lot about himself during his sexist tangent, which included him saying that he “experienced friction because he didn’t want a woman on a show he was doing”, and that he stayed away from Joy because he “knew what he was capable of, with that big rack and peanut butter skin.” The implications of this statement are almost as damning as him doubling down on them when he was called out over his choice of words, which he says were necessary to breaking it down “in a way that everyone can understand.” Imagine that, he needs to further sexualize Joy in order for people to understand his message. 

This is an instance where a man is admitting to possibly getting himself into some sort of trouble merely by being in proximity to a woman who he found attractive. And his only solution to the possibility of that problem was to refuse to give her a career opportunity in the event he couldn’t control himself. And what did social media do? Laughed and made memes about what he said.

Sports media has been in the gutter for a very long time, but the handling of this story has brought it to a far worse place, across all media platforms. 

Photo credits: Frank Micelotta/ PictureGroup for Fox Sports/ Shutterstock

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