Superbowl Scandal? AKA Nasty Boys on Film....

I'm going to weigh in here with my humble, nobody asked for it opinion on the Janet & Justin boobygate Superbowl scandal. Based on photos I saw on Fox Sports it really looks to me like yes, they did mean to pull off the top layer of Janet's bustier/leather thing and expose the red bra underneath. But I think Justin gripped a bit too much fabric & we got the "whole enchilada" -- so to speak. The look on Justin's face in one of the still photos I saw says "Holy Crap!" (See picture number 10 in the sequence there). And Janet doesn't look pleased at all, either. So, I do think they intended a bit of "drama" there at the end, but not quite as much as they got. Picture 5 is that looking-down, realizing you're "out" moment that all women have probably had at some point (at the beach with me, with waves a little more wavey than I thought).

OOOH there's gonna be some scandal, and some red-faced embarrassment. As CBS said: MTV won't be doing another halftime show. Well, there were parts of this one that were the best I've seen in a while, but the entire Jackson bit was a bit odd-- sort of like a cross between Les Mis and A Clockwork Orange with a little Cirque du Soleil thrown in there in the costume department. I guess the thing they forgot is that the Superbowl is not quite the MTV movie awards and/or even the Grammies. A little more conservative there fellas.

But still. I gotta give my man Justin props-- I don't think he meant to do it, and he's the only person I've seen statements from other than the official "CBS" statement. (How do you like the "street cred" I get there with my oh so cool lingo?) I know. I'm so cool. Everyone seems to assume it was not an accident. I don't think the main part with the bare booby was on purpose. Yes, she had something that looked like a pasty there-- I think it was the normal earrings she has in her breasts. Janet IS a bit of a strange one, in some ways, but it doesn't look like a pasty so much as metal-- jewelry that stays put.

Finally, what I want to say about this is that I think it's actually sort of funny (in a not funny way) that we get offended by the sight of a woman's breast on TV. Yes, if it was on purpose and using sex to sell and objectification and all that, fine, that's wrong.

But I personally am much more offended when I see some bigshot action hero blow someone's head off on TV, and there's no public outcry and no quick cutaway. Why isn't anyone talking about the guys grabbing crotch every three seconds like they were afraid it would disappear if they didn't check on it?

One of the things I discovered in New Orleans when people were "flashing for beads" is that bared breasts are much less threatening feeling than bared male anatomy. Some guys, in trying to get our beads, would offer to unzip. And that was just creepy, where the breast flashing was different, and less weird, and after a while, it wasn't even all that shocking. But there's a power differential there, where a guy bares the "package" it feels more like a threat than a peep show. Why is it that CBS has to apologize for an accidental breast peek and the news says about the nearly naked streaker "a streaker running onto the field just before the start of the third quarter certainly was entertaining."?

So what was with all that crotch grabbing?

UPDATE: You know, the more I think about it, the more disturbed I am by this whole incident. Feministe has a good take on the incident that brings up some points I hadn't thought of. In reading her post, I have changed my mind about how I feel. I was just basically thinking of it as a "freedoms" issue-- but even IF there hadn't been the "wardrobe malfunction," even giving them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't MEAN to expose her whole breast, it was a violent display of a woman being exposed for "titillation" of an unsuspecting audience. Bleah. I'm just mad at everyone today, and now I realize why that whole halftime show got under my skin.

Update 2 There's now an official "apology" from Janet's side of the camp, and I am right that they didn't mean it to go so far. But I do still think that the fact they thought it would be "cute" to simulate a sexual assault of sorts shows how toxic our culture's attitude about sex is.