According to reports, Holly Willoughby, This Morning, was told not to wear a bra while working as a children’s TV presenter.
It’s been said that this decision was so that the TV personality would look ‘more attractive’ to male viewers, with the 42-year-old supposedly adding that the programmes with a younger target population that she starred on ‘weren’t genuinely for children’.
Holly has hosted ITV’s daytime show This Morning for the past 14 years, as well as presenting on other shows such as Dancing On Ice, The Xtra Factor, and Celebrity Juice.
She began her career on children’s television, appearing on programmes such as Xchange, X-perimental, and CBBC at the Fame Academy.
Holly and Stephen’s Saturday Showdown, formerly known as Ministry of Mayhem, aired from 2004 to 2006, and she also hosted the children’s show Feel The Fear.
One person believed to be close to Holly revealed that when they saw her on one of her shows, they wondered why she wasn’t wearing a bra.
‘Before I knew who Holly even was, I saw her without a bra on and asked a director who she was and why she was dressed like that,’ they said, according to The Mail on Sunday.
‘I said she needs to get a bra on, it was children’s television. I reminded Holly of it some time later and she said they made her not wear a bra, that the shows weren’t actually for children. It was pretty staggering that this was going on.’
A television source told the magazine that other young women were also influenced by’misogynistic’ decision-making.
‘It was what it was like back then, young women were told what they should wear and they didn’t say no,’ they said.
‘Like with a lot of other industries, television was run predominantly by men and young, pretty ambitious women were hired and they had to do as they were told. It was wholly misogynistic.’
Holly appeared to indicate earlier this week that she will be returning to Dancing On Ice following Phillip Schofield’s departure from the programme.
It has been rumoured that Stephen Mulhern, her former co-host, may appear with her.
