The Gender Bending Anchor in the Twin Cities
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No one can accuse KARE Anchor Jana Shortal of not doing it her way.
Shortal anchors KARE 11’s “Breaking the News” in Minneapolis and is maybe the only gender-nonconforming journalists in local TV.
In an industry where women are expected to follow “an unspoken dress code,” as Shortal calls it, embracing her own style has not been easy.
Shortal tells NBC News she hopes she can be an inspiration for women and LGBTQ people in news and entertainment. “All I am is a daily reminder on their screens that they can be who they want to be,” she said.
Shortal, 40, has been an out lesbian since she was 26 years old. But, as a reporter, she felt pressured to keep her more masculine style hidden behind what she called her “lady uniform.” For years, she put on a dress every morning and straightened her naturally curly hair into a chin-length bob.
“I did the most I could to fit into that, not knowing that it was slowly killing me, because it was like costuming almost,” she explained.
Then, in 2016, when KARE 11 offered the journalist her own show, one of her producers had an unusual request. She wanted Shortal to feel comfortable on camera and felt the only way she could do that was to be herself. Shortal brought her off-camera style to the studio: pants, loafers, cropped hair and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. Viewer reactions have been mixed, she said, from people questioning her gender to mean tweets about her short curls.
“For every negative reaction, I have to be honest, I get 500 positive reactions,” Shortal said. Her unorthodox style has attracted many fans, including a teenager who dressed up as her for Halloween.
“When you see kids dress up like you for Halloween, I think that’s awesome,” she said. “Kids don’t dress up like something for Halloween because they hate it — they’re somewhat inspired by it.”
While Shortal is breaking barriers, she doesn’t give herself all the credit. She nodded to legendary journalists like Dianne Sawyer and Katie Couric, who made it acceptable for women to be reporters in the first place.
“I’m totally understanding that there’s maybe 10 sets of shoulders that I stand on that allowed me to get to this place,” Shortal said. "I want the next generation to have a thousand sets of shoulders to stand on.”
H/T NBC News
