NBC’s ‘Bodies in Motion’ Porny Video Accused Of Breaching Moral Editorial Standards

One blatant misuse of sanction in being the sole official US broadcaster, a major moral lapse, has put all of NBC’s other glitches in the shade. The tape delays, the obsession with US athletes that saw viewers missing out on other prime events, the meaningless and hollow pool and track side interviews, all these have paled into insignificance, against the “Bodies in Motion,” video that NBC has made, featuring slow shots of female athlete, focusing on their breasts, butts and midriffs, set to music that has been described as “cheesily porn-like”

As if the images are not enough indicators, the written description of the video says, “Check out these bodies in motion during the Olympic Games.”

Jezebel.com blogger Erin Gloria Ryan called the video as “little more than masturbatory fantasy.” She said that, if you believed NBC, “Olympic bodies are at their most noteworthy when they’re female, (mostly) white, stereotypically feminine, and thin. Apparently NBC is too busy focusing on jiggling ladies’ asses to notice ladies kicking ass,” she fumed.

This year, for the first time in US Olympic history female athletes outnumbered the number of male athletes sent to the games. They have lived up to the faith imposed in them having earned 51 medals between them, as of August 9th and will surely better the 53 medals won by U.S. women athletes in Beijing in 2008.

Given such excellent credentials, it would be perhaps be more appropriate to appreciate and applaud them for their athletic dexterity and accomplishments. Unfortunately NBC has chosen to focus on their cleavage and sex appeal.

In the video we are not told who the women are, which country they represent, as if providing such information would be an intrusion in the viewers ogling of the bodies on display. It is hard to comprehend how such an obviously sexist video could pass the editorial standards for a news organization.

The first two shots show one woman athlete taking off her shorts and another licking her lips. Very few black athletes have been shown. All the athletes are wearing skimpy clothing and in the course of their athletic exertions, reveal parts of their cleavage that is “slow-motioned” to titillate.

Most of the images are totally gross, there are ponytailed runners jumping up and down, their twin assets bouncing, and blowing kisses to the crowd? Shots of tennis player backsides as they wait for serves and beach volleyball players as they, in congratulatory gestures, smack each other’s bottoms and there quite a few shots of the female backside as it clears the bar in the jumping events.

It’s a dumb video that fails to take into account what the women have achieved. The American women have been the major contributors to the US medical tally, with the ladies being responsible for at least 24 of the country’s 33 gold medals, without the ladies and the swimming medals the US men would have brought home 3 paltry gold medals –  seeing a TV network treat them as just eye-candy’ is hugely disappointing and humiliating.

Women have always come off second best when compared to the men and the coverage has been very controversial.  Even before the games started there was criticism about swimmer Leisel Jones’ weight and American hurdler Lolo Jones was thrust into the limelight, less for her abilities than her obsession with her beauty and self-professed virginal status.

NBC would do well to realize that they should focus their media coverage of women on their ability and not on their beauty and curves – they are bringing home medals owing to their sporting skills and not because they have shapely breasts and well-rounded derrieres.

It’s a reminder of how much this Olympics, which has been a terrific one for women in so many ways, has brought out the uglier, stupider impulses in a lot of people,” Alyssa Rosenberg writes on Thinkprogress.org