Presenter says she was fired from Globo for being ‘too pretty’

Janaína Xavier left Grupo Globo in May 2022, after 23 years at the station. In a recent interview, the former SporTV presenter said that she felt she was losing space on the channel because others considered her to be a woman who was “too pretty”. According to the journalist, the station had been seeking “other standards” for exactly two years and, as a result, she ended up being fired.

According to her, at that moment the network decided to include “a chubbier girl” and “even a black woman”. Janaína then explained. “There was a certain moment when I was feeling treated like ‘you’re too pretty to be here’ and then they had to include the chubbier girl. Everyone sees beauty in a different way, people. I’m not saying that the chubbier girl isn’t beautiful. Far from it. I’m talking about their point of view”, she told the podcast “Benja Me Mucho”, hosted by Benjamin Back.

Janaína emphasized that she has always been in favor of meritocracy and, today, in her view, the issue revolves around “different profiles”. “That’s my view. In the rush to show diversity, when the issue is hiring a woman or a man, they go for the woman. A black or white woman, they go for the black woman. She is chubby and out of the norm, the other is very pretty, a slut… let’s go for the first one.”

Janaína also recalled that she had to take a few months off work after becoming pregnant with her second daughter, at the age of 43, during the pandemic. At the end of her maternity leave, the channel decided to hire her replacement Mariana Fontes. “I suffered and was hurt by people on the channel more than by the company. It felt heavy. After I was fired, people disappeared.”