So This Happened: KTLA Meteorologist Asked to Cover Up During Live Report

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Liberté Chan is a weather reporter for KTLA. Courtesy of yahoo.com

Liberté Chan, a meteorologist for KTLA in Los Angeles, California, was forced to cover up during her live morning broadcast Sat. May 14 after the station was flooded with complaint emails.

During the broadcast, an arm reaches out to her and hands Chan a gray sweater to cover up the shiny, shoulder-less, knee length black dress with beaded tassels. Chan, confused as the arm extends the sweater, says,”What’s going on? You want me to put this on? Why, cause it’s cold?” The voice, off-camera says that, “We’re getting a lot of emails.” To compromise, Chan ties the sweater at her waist, and the off-camera voice says, “Everyone’s got an opinion about your dress this morning.”

Buzzfeed reports that the off-camera voice and helping hand is of Chris Burrous, a KTLA anchor and Chan’s co-worker. Burrous then took to Twitter where he was met with some harsh criticism of “publicly shaming” Chan.

The incident was trending on Twitter for sometime as #Sweatergate and it begs the question of how sexism is still very much alive in the United States. Personally, I do not believe that Burrous is at fault or to blame at all for the incident. Of course, the anchor could have waited until commercial break to make the outfit change but he was only doing what we can imagine executive producers of the show had wanted; have Chan covered up for the sake of the show’s sexist viewers.

Chris Borrous jumped to Liberté Chan's rescue during wardrobe malfunction. Courtesy of weather.com/KTLA

Chris Borrous jumped to Liberté Chan’s rescue during wardrobe malfunction. Courtesy of weather.com/KTLA

This is not the first time that Chan’s outfit of choice had “problems.” Earlier this March, Chan’s dress did not work well with the chroma key and blended in to the digital forecast screen. That time, Burrous jumped to her rescue, offering up his blazer to the fix the mistake.

The beautiful black dress in question, which complements Chan’s petite figure, only revealed her shoulders and arms. Her cleavage is concealed by the dress and falls just a little above her knees.

This is simply another case of sexism manipulating something as simple and plain as a news broadcast and sexualizing a young woman while she reports on the weather.

Watch #Sweatergate unfold below:

https://twitter.com/PopCrave/status/731875762983309314