The "wardrobe malfunction" is a phenomenon I confess I wasn't really aware of until Super Bowl XXXVIII. Half of us at the party were watching the actual Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake halftime show, the other half were watching the South Park (or was it Family Guy?) episode running at the same time. I was in the latter category, and even after everyone came storming into the room with the big screen TV to make us rewind The Incident 20 times, I failed to see what the big deal was. "Her nipple wasn't even bare," I thought, "No one will care about this."
Yeah.
The thing is, aside from ensuring Super Bowl audiences will never see a halftime performers younger than 50 ever again (the list since: Paul McCartney, Aaron Neville, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Prince, Tom Petty, Bruuuuce, and the Who), Jackson's nipple slip has opened the floodgates for a slew of similar incidents. Rather than taking precautions to keep that sort of thing from happening again, today's (overwhelmingly female) performers continue to dress in a manner most likely to lead to unexpected nudity.
As disillusioning as it is to realize record companies encourage young women to dress like strippers in order to succeed in the music industry, it's more disappointing to see presumably powerful women in that same industry (Beyonce, Lady Gaga) continue to stick to the party line.
Anyway, here are some of the more infamous recent examples. It gets extremely not safe for work after the jump.
Britney Spears
Hard as it may be to believe, the singer who made her bones dressing like a naughty Catholic schoolgirl and dancing at the VMAs with a snake has suffered for her progressively skimpier outfits. In 2009 in Tampa, for example, her crotch became exposed after "Slave 4 U." I'm not sure what's more surprising: that her decidedly lackadaisical performance led to nudity, or that her mic was ever keyed to record live audio.
Pink
It wasn't exactly unplanned, but Pink swung around on the stage at the 2009 VMAs with one breast hanging out. That I never even heard about this until working on this piece tells you all we need to know about how much of a big deal the media makes out of this stuff anymore.
Katy Perry
Perry is famed for her tight, unforgiving concert wardrobe, and she's occasionally suffered for it.
