I was looking for some video to watch yesterday while waiting for incoming calls and checked out the CBS News site, since they’ve been touting an increased “24/7 online news” presence lately. Also, it had to be free newsvid, and I wanted to watch the 2-minutes’ silence observance on a delay, which their site made available in RAW video (not edited, full length). I picked some other videos using their handy “select for playlist” and listened idly. One choice was to watch Ground Force’s Charlie Dimmock explain how to select plants for and design a Mediterranean garden. Now, if you don’t know who the hell our Charlie is, this entire post will be meaningless, so you might as well go look at some nice puppies and kitties who need a home. But if you do know her, and understand a little of why people on both sides of the pond are obsessed with Charlie Dimmock’s chest, and why it so desperately needs to be liberated from durance vile and Puritanical, here’s the deal:
Charlie does not wear a bra when she appears on British television, and in fact is well known for this. On one episode of the original British-produced Ground Force, she and the other team members were given garden statuettes that were clever characatures. Hers included a hefty chest with prominent nipples. The likeness was striking. Luckily, I found the website where you can buy one for yourself, along with statues of Alan Titchmarsh and Tommy Walsh. Click the image for more detail and to go to the site.
Charlie ALWAYS seems to wear a bra when she appears on American-produced TV (as in the CBS Early Show clip and the version of Ground Force that’s produced here. Her fearlessness on camera (she makes no bones about working with no makeup, her rampant strawberry curls flying everywhere) is the same, but the bra she seems forced to wear (it wouldn’t be her first choice) isn’t a comfortable sports bra, it appears to be the industrial-strength variety with seaming that keeps those mighty nipples at bay. The issue of “Where’s Charlie’s Bra?” seems to be a bone of contention with some conservative British viewers, and it continues to be the one thing she’s known for besides water gardens on British TV.
Is it our American Puritanism that dictates that Charlie’s chest be held in durance vile? Was BBC America worried the FAA would issue a fatwa? Don’t know – but she’s been named an Honorary Heartless Bitch (a listing that includes untrammeled womanly archetypes like Katherine Hepburn and Selma Hayak). So good for you, Charlie. If this is America the Free, then let the girls out now and then!
Ironically, I’m wearing a bra to work today (I usually don’t bother) because it’s International T-shirt Day in the office and the “Mind the Gap” shirt I’m borrowing from David is a little “light.” :eyeroll: