20 years ago, a Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction changed more than Janet and Justin’s careers
The consequences of Janet Jackson's infamous 2004 Super Bowl halftime show echoed through the years, but she's not the only star to forever change technology
Aux Features Wardrobe malfunction
In a collection of interviews published in 2005, British novelist and cultural commentator J.G. Ballard put forth a pithy new theory: “Sex times technology equals the future.” By then, his hypothesis had already been proven a thousand times over. It was the rabid demand for photos of Jennifer Lopez’s green Versace dress, for example, that led to the creation of Google Images in 2001. Three years later, Facebook was born from a similar notion. The list goes on. Ballard likely didn’t know that yet another major advancement was underway as he spoke: one that would forever change the nature of privacy and media as we know it.
20 years ago this month, Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s breast live on television at the end of their Super Bowl halftime performance. If you weren’t one of the millions of people who watched the show that day or in the months and years that followed, here’s a quick refresher. At the end of her set, Jackson brought out Timberlake as a surprise guest to perform his song, “Rock Your Body.” While singing the final lyric (“Bet I’ll have you naked by the end of this song”), Timberlake accordingly tore off a piece of Jackson’s costume, revealing her bare breast. (Jackson was wearing a nipple pasty at the time.) The rip was intentional, but the amount of fabric that came off was not.
It was an incident that indelibly altered the course of both artist’s careers: Jackson in the immediate aftermath, as she was effectively blacklisted from the industry as a result of those few seconds, and Timberlake in the long term, as his inaction in the face of Jackson’s massively outsized punishment continues to cast a long shadow over his work even two decades on. That aspect of the so-called “wardrobe malfunction” has been litigated and re-litigated time and time again. But the whole thing also led to a lesser acknowledged, but no less earth-shaking consequence: without “Nipplegate,” YouTube may have never been invented.
Opening the door for YouTube
Despite then-FCC chairman Michael Powell’s insistence that the incident led to “thousands” of complaints from an “outrage(d)” American public the next morning, the truth of the matter is that people really wanted to see Janet Jackson’s breast. A few days after the incident, then-fledgling brand TiVo reported that those few seconds were the service’s most rewatched moment of all time, causing a 180 percent spike in viewership as people realized they could actually rewind and replay the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it frame. One of those users may have even been Powell, who made a whole lot of noise about the situation for someone who was supposedly so disgusted by it. He had previously referred to TiVo as “god’s machine,” so he was clearly taken by the technology as a whole.
Another man inspired to action by the wardrobe malfunction was Jawed Karim, who—with his PayPal buddies Chad Hurley and Steven Chen—lamented the fact that videos of the incident were so hard to find online. What if, he suggested, there was a place regular people could go to rewatch footage of a celebrity losing her career in real-time, or on-the-ground recordings of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, or anything they wanted, really? “I thought it was a good idea,” Karim told USA Today in 2006. In 2005, Karim uploaded the first-ever clip to YouTube—a 19-second video titled “Me at the zoo” that’s now racked up over 300 million views—and thus the now-omnipresent video-sharing site was born.
Janet Jackson is far from the only woman whose violated privacy led to massive advancements in technology. It happened to Pamela Anderson in the ’90s and it’s happening to Taylor Swift today. In a frustrating parallel to Jackson’s situation, Swift’s recent presence among the NFL elite has led to a similar campaign to humiliate and punish the celebrity for her position.
A few weeks ago, a series of sexually suggestive, AI-generated images of the singer popped up on Twitter/X, where they remained (at least in one case) for as long as 17 hours, even as outraged fans flooded the platform with posts of their own to bury them as best they could. Still, in the time the fake images were up, they racked up hundreds of likes and reached thousands of eyeballs. Two decades later, an innocent pop star’s non-consensual exposure once again became something for faceless strangers to consume over and over again, purely for their own pleasure.
A Taylor Swift moment
There is one key difference between Swift’s and Jackson’s situations, though. In 2004, Nipplegate was treated as Jackson’s fault. Among her other punishments, the singer was made to apologize on the network’s behalf the next day, writing (via Billboard), “the decision to have a costume reveal at the end of my halftime show performance was made after final rehearsals. MTV [which produced the halftime show] was completely unaware of it. It was not my intention that it go as far as it did. I apologize to anyone offended—including the audience, MTV, CBS, and the NFL.”
The FCC even took CBS and parent company Viacom all the way to the Supreme Court over the incident, arguing that Jackson’s nudity was “shocking and pandering” during a broadcast advertised as a family event (via CNN). While the court eventually ruled in the networks’ favor, the decision was essentially based on a loophole: the FCC had only clarified its “no exceptions” expletive policy after the fact. CBS and Viacom were legally pardoned; Janet was not.
While what happened to Swift is obviously extremely shitty, there could be one small silver lining to the whole thing. Deepfakes—especially pornographic ones—are far from new; having a name as big as Swift’s attached to them is. The pop star’s victimization seems to have finally kicked the White House into gear to develop legislation to prevent this sort of “nonconsensual sharing of digitally altered explicit images” from spiraling too far out of control in the future. For once, a female star’s unfair treatment may lead to the regulation of technology rather than its proliferation. If so, we may actually be witnessing the beginning of the end of a cycle that has affected Jackson and so many other women for far too many years now.
46 Comments
“The rip was intentional, but the amount of fabric that came off was not.”I simply don’t believe that. Even watching it in real time, it was apparent the whole triangle of her top was velcro’d down, and Timberlake knew exactly where to grab. We’re to believe the intent was to show her bra, and she just happened to be wearing a big metal nipple ring under there for sport?
They were definitely trying to save face with that excuse… but also, who gives a shit? That whole thing was totally disproportionate.
I tend to think it’s good when people say true things, and don’t expect me to believe false things that insult my intelligence.
yeah…it was 100% choreographed.
This I have been saying the same thing for YEARS, the entire thing was planned from the jump, they just didn’t expect the backlash, and Jackson was the only one to see long term career blowback.
Still obsessed about a Black woman’s nipple?
I for one was very happy to see Janet Jackson’s nipple. 10/10, would look again.But no, I’m just commenting on that story up there that we all just read. It is amazing this is still a topic, and even more amazing the amount of shit she got for it. Even at the time it was such a silly grab (heh heh) at being transgressive. A good idea in retrospect? Yeah probably not. But hardly the travesty it was made out to be.
Which no one ever saw. Her nipple was completely covered by a metal nipple shield. No worse than what Lil’ Kim wore (which Diana Ross shook) six years earlier at the VMAs.
He’s commenting on an article about it, weirdo.
Nipple rings aren’t generally things you just pop in and out, trust me.Regardless of whether it was intentional, the bigger point is the pearl clutching faux Puritanism response from networks that at the time were quite happy showing audiences dead people in an illegal war on the news 24 hours a day. But a nipple – fucking Satan himself shat in horror.
I was there live, and just watched the tv broadcast for the first time. Live you could tell something happened, but we didn’t know what until we saw the news the next day. Upon review, Nelly and Diddy playing with their units singing “its getting hot in here so take off all your clothes,” and Kid Rock wearing an American Flag as a poncho, singing about setting up a brothel and his crackhead heroes……1000x more “offensive” than the nanosecond Janet’s breast was exposed. The hypocrisy from the pearl clutchers just continues to ooze.
But… a booby… on television!
There’s something ironic, yet totally on-brand, about having an article detailing a story where a Black woman’s career is forced to take a backseat (to put it lightly) slowly morphs into a story about what this all means for Taylor Swift.
Maybe some Swift Boob is forthcoming??
And when we all debate whether it was intentional or not after the fact, we can all be Swift Boob Veterans for Truth.
That’s a lot of 2004 in one joke.
I for one am 100% behind Swift Boob
Unfortunately swift Boob is pretty much all I can get. Lower-case.
lol you and me both, plus if we ever did get Swift Boob, I am pretty sure Swifities will cause all of humanity to blink out of existence.
“Taylor Swift’s boobs are Pentagon-backed psy-ops dedicated to the re-election of Joe Biden” – probably some FoxNuze anchor
I was saying Swift Boob-urns.
Not too swift. I prefer to linger.
And then it further morphs into, “Eh, the white girl ain’t got it so bad.”
“Oh good, finally an article not about TSwift on this wretched, failed excuse for an entertainment website!”*starts reading*“fuuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUU”
“Timberlake in the long term, as his inaction in the face of Jackson’s massively outsized punishment continues to cast a long shadow over his work even two decades on”Jesus fucking Christ – it was her halftime show and her choreography. I have no clue why anyone thinks Timberlake was obligated to jump on that grenade for her.
Leaving out what happened to Howard Stern as a result of this dumb ‘mistake’ is a travesty.
“You KNEW what you were doing. You wanted us all to be abuzz.” – ???
as she was effectively blacklisted from the industry as a result Hmm, that does seem a tad hyperbolic, no? Also, that link is to the supreme court telling everyone to “shut up already” about this nipple situation…and that was in 2012. Idk, maybe take their advice?She wasn’t blackballed. It was clearly choregraphed. No, the exact correct amount of clothing came off, as intended. Anyone, including you Keates, saying otherwise clearly has an agenda, or is just too dumb for this life.
From Wikipedia:“In addition, CBS parent company Viacom and its co-owned subsidiaries, MTV and Infinity Broadcasting, enforced a blacklist of Jackson’s singles and music videos on many radio formats and music channels worldwide.”
First, that’s not an “industry blacklist.” Second, that claim on Wikipedia has a big ol’ [citation needed] that you somehow neglected to include. It’s impossible to miss, so I wonder how that happened…
If you weren’t so lazy, you could have scrolled down for the link to the story that is the citation for this claim:https://www.huffpost.com/entry/les-moonves-janet-jackson-career_n_5b919b8ce4b0511db3e0a269?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004
This was 11 years AFTER we had to deal with Dennis Franz’ bare ass in NYPD Blue. We all lived through that. I have never once met anyone actually offended by seeing it. I’m convinced they don’t exist and are just figments of the Internet.
“If you don’t talk soon, I’mma have to show you my ass.”
True story… The baring of Denis Franz’ ass led one man, Alan T. Forfour, to event Alt F4.
I’m curious to hear more about that?
American prudishness about “female-presenting nipples” will never not be dumb.
“Will nobody think of the children?!?”
Can we just never speak of this again it’s been over 20 yrs. LET IT GO PEOPLE!!!!
“Another man inspired to action by the wardrobe malfunction was Jawed Karim, who … lamented the fact that videos of the incident were so hard to find online.”Is he suggesting that there are men who want to use the internet to find footage of women’s nipples? Because I find that *very* hard to believe!
It tweaked my interest.
What I took from this at the time was American politics eating itself. Both sides are accurate. A ‘wardrobe malfunction’ is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but the people defending it were essentially attacking the other side for being prudish. Prince had said something like, “People just want to go to a football game.”Again, it’s not a huge deal. But the whole “A BOOB IS MAKING FUNDAMELANTIST CHRISTIANS CRAZY AM I THE ONLY ONE SANE” is/was lazy, fashionable and thoughtless. Do you want Ronald McDonald to randomly show his penis in commercials?It wasn’t the height of scandal, but it’s the Super Bowl and network TV, and they were right in getting in *some* small trouble for it, long since forgiven.People who don’t incredibly easily see both sides of this story are the real story
“Do you want Ronald McDonald to randomly show his penis in commercials?” Yes. I. Do. I lived in Belgium for a year shortly before this absurd scandal happened. It was (and is) a totally normal thing for day-time commercials in Western Europe to show full-frontal nudity of both sexes in a non-sexual and very casual manner. Families waking up together naked, showering, getting dressed and other daily, normal activities that would naturally involve having/taking your clothes off. Children of all ages watched these commercials and it was absolutely 100% healthy and fine. This scandal was typical, American Puritanical hysteria.
That sounds .. very foreign, but I’ll take your word for it. I’ll reiterate that I’m not/wasn’t in the outrage side of this, but seeing a bunch of naked kids to sell Happy Meals seems .. excessive.
Forgotten, maybe (until this article), but never forgiven. They’ll be trotting this out whenever they need a convenient outrage. And it did give us the phrase, “wardrobe malfunction”, which most certainly hasn’t been forgotten.
Jezus ducking CHRIST are people STILL talking about this????
I remember this back when it happened , as someone from Europe it was a reminder that US culture ,despite being similar to ours , occasionally is just ‘weird’ . Over here , either a/ nobody would have been bothered , or b/ in the more prudish parts of the continent , it would have led to a lot of ‘and finally’ lighthearted news sections, and people being embarrassed for her. In fact her career would have probably gotten a boost ( rather than getting her blacklisted for years)In the US , it was basically ‘Burn the Witch’ from what I saw.
I didn’t watch it, nor a Super Bowl since, because everything around the game overshadows the game (and that one was a pretty boring one, if memory serves), but damn if you couldn’t avoid it for weeks after the fact. This is not what we were put on this Earth to do.