It’s impossible to fully relay the female experience — but Kelly Ripa teaching Ryan Seacrest about mammograms was a hilarious sendup of one formidable struggle women face. Annually, no less. Ripa devoted six minutes of Tuesday’s Live With Kelly and Ryan to describing her most recent appointment, joking, “You don’t know the fun of a mammogram until you’ve gone with me. Because, you know, what, really, are they going to put in that vice?”
Of course, envisioning a mammogram can be difficult for those who’ve never had one before. TBH, it sounds a lot like being placed in some sort of medieval torture device (which, coincidentally, it also feels like). So, in order to help Seacrest better understand what an uncomfortable process it all is, Ripa turned into a hands-on teacher. Cupping and squeezing Seacrest’s pec, she told him, “They would have had an easier time with you than with me. Trust me. They’ve got more to work with here than with what I have.”
Smushing her face against the top of the desk on set, she tried to recreate the scene. “There’s not so much for them to work with, so literally, my face is smashed in the glass,” Ripa explained, “And then she goes, ‘And hold your breath. And breathe … and hold your breath again.’ And I’m like, ‘Why am I a woman?'”
Ripa’s retelling of the story is even more hilarious considering that, during this awkward and uncomfortable process, Ripa had been trying to reach her phone to text husband Mark Consuelos about dinner. As her breasts were being pancaked between plated glass, it occurred to her that she was running late and might need a little assistance. “I was making linguini and clams. The boys asked for that. And Mark is home so infrequently that I try to do wife things and be nice when he’s there. I try to, like, fool him,” she playfully explained.
Realistically, being forced to stay still for an extended period of time may be one of the many reasons Ripa hates the mammogram experience. Doing a million things at once is kind of her thing (you’ve seen the Electrolux commercials, right?). But she ultimately made it through the “mammogram” and parlayed it into an opportunity to squeeze Seacrest’s chest on live TV, to boot.
Plus, in approaching an oft-maligned experience with that kind of humor, Ripa might inspire more women to make their own appointments. So, it seems like a win-win for everyone — although we imagine Ripa’s breasts might be inclined to disagree.
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