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Pop Culture Advent Calendar, Day 11: 'Heavy Boobs, Heavy Boobs'

Once a day, until Dec. 25, we'll be highlighting a specific small, good thing that happened in popular culture this year. And we do mean small: a moment or image from a film or TV show, a panel from a comic, a brief exchange from a podcast, or a passage from a book.


"Jiggle television," it was called: a kind of programming popular in the 1970s and '80s that highlighted the physical attributes of its female stars. Think Charlie's Angels, Three's Company — shows that made sure their nubile leads found themselves in bikinis and lingerie as often as possible.

Decades later, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-creator and star Rachel Bloom answered that trend with a musical number that took the concept of "jiggle television" to its natural conclusion.

The song "Heavy Boobs", and its accompanying dance moves, are not meant to titillate 14-year-old boys, but to demonstrate, in a defiantly and deliberately unsexy way, the sundry practical challenges faced by those who look at the world from behind a set of double-Ds.

In the process, she tosses out fun facts concerning the literary output of the song's titular objects, the density of astronomical objects, and offers up the following, in a laudable effort to inform and educate:

Here is a list

Of all of the objects

That I can hold

Under

My boobs:

Stapler

Ten pencils

Paperback copy of Arabian Nights

Dog bone

Remote control

Hardback copy of Wuthering Heights


Previous Pop Culture Advent Calendar Entries

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Glen Weldon is a host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. He reviews books, movies, comics and more for the NPR Arts Desk.