blogpost5

Kristen Coyne

February 27, 2015

Blog Post 5

            In Chapter 6 of The Rise of Enlightened Sexism entitled Sex “R” Us, Susan Douglas talks about the “wardrobe malfunction” at the halftime show performance in the 2004 Super Bowl. The performance included P. Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock, Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson. The performance as a whole was extremely sexual with crotch grabbing, inappropriate dancing, and dirty lyrics. But, when Justin Timberlake sings the infamous line from his popular hit Rock Your Body, “I’m gonna have you naked by the end of this song” Justin pulls off Janet Jackson’s leather breastplate to reveal her bare breast with only a small plate over her nipple. When this happened, the country was outraged. There was an estimated 90 million people tuned into the show, including many young children. The FCC fined the CBS television network $550,000 for disturbing indecency rules. Although this was extremely inappropriate, especially with viewers of all ages watching, many people believed it was nothing out of the ordinary for performances at this time. Women are always portrayed in a sexual way in the media, including in things that are available to all ages, so many people believed this was not a big deal.  In my opinion, the performance was already inappropriate, and should not have been allowed knowing young children would be watching it. But since it was already inappropriate, I do not see how her breast showing made it that much bigger of a deal. I also don’t believe it was a wardrobe malfunction because she had part of her breast covered, and why else would she have that on it if that wasn’t meant to happen? It also happened at the perfect time directly after he said “I’m gonna have you naked by the end of this song”. I feel that the backlash was not surprising, and would have been expected even before the “wardrobe malfunction”. I also looked into articles from when this occurred and I noticed that Janet Jackson was getting more of the backlash than Justin, even though he was the one who ripped her breastplate off. They were performing this together, so the backlash should have been directed at both of them. Women are told to act in a sexual manner and are portrayed that way in society, but when they act that way they are reprimanded for it. Women can never win in society.