The reaction to Janet Jackson’s ‘wardrobe malfunction’ would be much worse today

In February 2004, Janet Jackson headlined the Super Bowl XXXVII Halftime show.

The gig is a dream for any musician, with a guaranteed audience of tens of millions of viewers across the US and abroad.

But what should have been a highlight of Janet’s already well-established career instead almost led to its end; Janet was practically forced into hiding, becoming a pariah in the industry, mocked and blacklisted across the United States.

We’re talking, of course, about ‘Nipplegate’, the name given to the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ that led to Janet’s breast being exposed on stage, instead of her bra, which had been the plan.

But wait – what’s with the passive voice? Didn’t Justin Timberlake literally rip her costume open and expose her nipple to millions?

Sure he did – but it was 2004, before third-wave feminism, conversations around consent and victim-blaming were mainstream; before society had any real self-awareness about our tendency to vilify a woman while letting a man slide easily off the hook, before everyone reminded people to Be Kind.

If so-called Nipplegate happened today, at the 2022 Super Bowl, things would surely be different – we’ve come too far to totally annihilate the woman while the man literally laughs it off and goes on to be a bigger star than ever. Right?

Unfortunately, probably not.

Metro.co.uk spoke to expert Dr Elle Boag, Associate professor in Applied Social Psychologist at Birmingham City University, and asked a simple question: If this happened today, would the reaction be any different?

‘I’d like to say yes,’ Dr Boag says. ‘But I’m not 100% certain that it would… it could be much, much worse.’

The reason being: the double-edged sword that is social media.

There would be plenty defending Janet today, with movements like Free Britney showing people’s willingness to stand up for a woman being treated – to put it lightly – unfairly.

But while Dr Boag accepts the movement was ‘a really important step forward’, should Nipplegate happen today ‘there would be those that support her but underneath there is going to be this vileness’.

‘Because we have so much social media… we have instantaneous access to platforms where we can be anybody we want to be. We can hide who we are, we can be all the horrible things and let it all out,’ she explains.

‘The potential is that the vilification of Janet Jackson would be much, much worse now.’

At the same time, it’s fair to say a lot of society has become desensitized to seeing breasts, thanks in part to the internet, ‘so it may well be that it may be less embarrassing for her,’ Dr Boag suggests.

‘OK, it’s not pleasant… but at the end of the day [Janet] might be like, “I’m very sorry that happened but it’s only a breast.” It was an accidental thing. It wasn’t her fault. And it is just a breast.’

However the conservative American reaction would be the same as in 2004, and it was this reaction that prompted FCC director Michael Powell to order an investigation into what he called the ‘classless, crass and deplorable stunt’, and issue a $550,000 (£406,000) fine to broadcaster CBS which was later overturned.

A decade later, the director himself accepted that the incident had been blown out of proportion, and even his own reaction was too much, but Dr Boag predicts history would likely repeat itself today.

‘His reaction would have been driven by the conservative reaction,’ she explains. ‘The American bible belt, who are against anything like this. At the time, [the FCC] were very much driven by that response.’

And what about feminism? What about all the strides we’ve taken for equality and fairness? It’s unlikely to make much of a difference, Dr Boag suggests.

‘Still it somehow becomes her fault, because she is in ownership of the breast,’ she says.

‘It’s not the fact that somebody has made that happen, and that somebody happens to be male.’

And what of that male? After the enormous scandal in 2004, Justin Timberlake quite literally laughed it off, brought out FutureSex/ LoveSounds two years later and even made the moment part of his set at the 2008 Espy awards, while ‘Janet was hiding’.

‘I think today JT might get more flack,’ Dr Boag considers.

‘He might get more flack – not because of who he is or anything personal, but because of what he actually did. We’re less [hesitant] in coming forward now about other people’s actions.

‘So it’s double-edged. She’d get a load of s**t but so would he. They would both be targeted because of who they are.’

But here’s where social media and the enormous, rapid technological advancement in society comes in to play again – in the form of fan wars.

‘[Justin] is still quite out there in the media, more than Janet,’ meaning he’s likely to have ‘younger followers who are social media savvy,’ Dr Boag says.

Essentially, if ever you thought the 2004 Super Bowl debacle couldn’t have been any worse, imagine the same thing happening but with memes, TikToks and Twitter discourse.

In the end, it appears society hasn’t quite come on in the leaps and bounds we sometimes reassure ourselves it has, because at its core, the issue remains the same: the sexualisation of women’s bodies.

For this, Dr Boag has some choice words.

‘It’s just a boob. As women, we’ve all got them – all shapes and sizes.

‘But at the end of the day, if we didn’t have them we wouldn’t have the capacity to feed our children. And then there’d be no human beings.

‘So get over it’.

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