the kicker

Couric on Cankles

August 24, 2009

In Katie Couric’s “Notebook” today (which I was tricked into reading via a Twitter promo-link posted by Couric or Couric staffer), Couric discovers and decries, on behalf of women and their bodies, “a new imperfection to add to the list:” “cankles.”

Couric cites a Wall Street Journal article from July (brought to you by the same reporter who wrote that Is Obama too skinny to be elected president in overweight America? piece last summer, a premise for which she was able to find one supporter via a Yahoo! message board) purportedly about some uptick in our collective concern with chubby ankles, a premise Couric appears to accept, noting that the cankles “concept has really taken off,” to the point of, apparently, an “anti-cankle craze” (when, as Couric must know, the only “new” thing here is that people positioned to make money off a purported “anti-cankle craze” — plastic surgeons, gyms –are, with assists from media, hoping to create the craze).

And yes, Couric’s diary entry, like the Journal piece and all things cankles, includes the obligatory Hillary Clinton reference.

(I think I might actually have preferred this coming from Andy Rooney.)

UPDATE: A tipster points out that CNN.com also has a report (and video) today on “cankles, a new flaw.” Gold’s Gym declared July “Cankles Awareness Month,” but some reporters are keeping the awareness alive well into August.

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.