NBC’s ‘Today’ Wonders Why Americans Are ‘Obsessed’ With Breasts, Then Shows Breasts 54 Times
Monday's NBC Today decided to devote a six-minute segment in the 8 a.m. ET hour to America's “obsession” with breasts, with co-host Ann Curry declaring: “…they have become an object of sort of undue fascination.” As the report was teased throughout the broadcast and during the segment itself, 54 pairs of breasts appeared on screen , with some images repeated. The irony of doing a segment filled with images of breasts while asking why people were obsessed with them seemed to be lost on NBC reporters and pundits as they decried the amount of attention given to that part of the female anatomy. Fill-in co-host Lester Holt referred to it as a “tempest in a C cup.” Correspondent Amy Robach reported: “Just how much are breasts on the human mind? A quick Google for them, paired with 'boobs' and the slang word starting with a 'T,' turns up almost a billion hits.” Following Robach's report, Curry discussed the topic with a panel women and wondered if the fascination was unique to America: “Are they a bigger obsession in this country than they are in other countries?” Anthropologist Natalia Reagan argued: “I think they are for a few reasons. One of them, obviously, there's a lot of rules restricting what can be shown on television and what can even be said on television about breasts.” Curry interjected: “So the conservative, kind of maybe almost…puritanical nature.” Reagan replied: “Yes.” Glamour magazine editor-in-chief Cindy Levi agreed with that observation: “I do think that that's probably true. You know, that the more conservative society, probably the more, sort of, obsessed we become about those things.” In her report, Robach noted recent incidents in which women were criticized for being too revealing: “For all of our cartoonish emphasis on the breast, showing too much of one is no laughing matter in some quarters.” Mentions included Janet Jackson exposing a single breast during the Super Bowl halftime show and the controversy surrounding a low-cut dress worn by Katy Perry during a Sesame Street appearance.
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on July 18, 2011. Filed under