What is this? What was MSNBC reporting on here?


Yes. This is an image of MSNBC’s Dr. Nancy Snyderman (playing catch-up!) “talking cankles” earlier today (I purposely cropped out the chyron which read: “Combatting Cankles”). And while the doctor confessed that she was “talking about something that is not going to alter the landscape of international medicine,” cankles have, she declared, “become an American obsession.” So bring on the plastic surgeon, the personal trainer, and the pop culture correspondent to discuss.

Here is the conversation that accompanied the above image (I swear):

SNYDERMAN: Before we start this segment, I’d like a close-up, please, of two ankles. Okay, Courtney Hazlett [MSNBC’s media and pop culture reporter] and Nancy Snyderman. Two ankles. Now. I don’t think those are cankles. We’re obviously both in ankle-strap shoes. I think those are two good-looking legs.


HAZLETT: There have been people who have e-mailed me to say, to point out that this area right here [gestures to her own outer ankle] is horrifically flawed….

And then the doctor asked the personal trainer whether there is “credibility to this in the workout world…”

The best quote of the segment, though, came courtesy of the plastic surgeon on the panel who, despite Snyderman’s repeated invitations to use the segment to overtly recruit be-cankled clients (he was more subtle), observed that some cankles cases are actually not correctable, that “some people, like my Russian forebearers, are just built like bulls.”

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.