Did You See That Shit? The History of Accidental TV Nudity

A nation awoke last Monday already colossally beyond-tired of hearing about Janet Jackson's titties, yet knowing intuitively they'd have to endure at least a month of teeth-gnashing from the three people in the world who were offended by sort-of seeing a woman's breast on TV. While most of the nation wouldn't have cared if Janet had smoked Justin Timberlake's icky boy-band pole onstage during the halftime show, many have written in with the same question: What's the big deal? Hasn't this shit happened before?

The answer, obviously, is that of course it's happened before you moron. So why is it such a big deal this time around? In part because of Janet's reputation, and in part because of the shock that something interesting actually happened at a football game. The CBS switchboards were flooded with calls within moments of the incident, with irate viewers complaining either that they only got to see one lousy tit or that they were in the can and missed the whole damned thing.

Much of the hoopla originates from Janet being known as the "most-normal" Jackson, which is sort of like being voted the most fun-loving Nazi at a German summer camp. If MTV'd had their first choice, and Britney Spears hadn't been tied up in a previous engagement stripping for Thai schoolchildren, nobody would have been fazed at all by this halftime anatomy lesson. Britney could have whipped a rubber chicken out of her cooch onstage without anyone batting an eyelid. But since America was half expecting Janet to rip off her fleshy body suit and finally reveal that Michael is the only Jackson, and he just dresses up as his "siblings" like Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, the unexpectedly realistic boobage on display was highly unsettling for most everyone who thought they had this whole "family" thing figured out.

Far less controversy farted out of the grapevine when hip-hop star and former pornstress Lil' Kim let most of it hang out of the mammary-flashing dress she wore to the Grammys in 2000, even though her outfit left less to the imagination than a Lubriderm commercial. But Kim's worn goods weren't anything new to anyone who'd ever turned on MTV or accidentally wandered into a porno store, while viewers had only seen Jackson mostly naked in videos, magazine photos and on album covers.

Fittingly, Lil' Kim's tried-and-true promotional technique of screwing a lot of guys in movies before she embarked on a hip-hop career harkens back to classical impresario Ludwig Van Beethoven, who dropped his shorts in a crowded restaurant to promote the struggling composer's fourth symphony "Symphony 4: More Lovin' from Beethoven" after his first three Symphonies ("Introducing...," "Gotta Feeling in My Heart," and "Rubbin' It,") did poorly in Nielsen polls of what people were humming back in those days.

An event strangely similar to the Jackson Superbowl fracas took place in 1988, when Tonight Show host Johnny Carson wore shorts instead of his trademark suit one night on the show as a joke, only to find the joke was on him when he sat down at his desk after the monologue and the studio and TV audiences caught a flash of his dapper white gonads. This unfortunate event received almost no media attention at the time, and the sighting was quickly and vividly disavowed by all present. Needless to say, not many schoolchildren were bragging that they saw Johnny Carson's nuts pop out when they returned to school the following Monday. Sales of bicycle shorts plummeted and a kind of embarrassed silence fell over the nation.

Viewers with a good memory for this kind of thing were reminded of Today Show host Dave Garroway from the 1950's, who chronically forgot to zip up his fly and as a result frequently had his baggage get loose during musical sketches on the show. 1950's viewers pretended they hadn't seen anything for years, until Garroway was fired after a memorable interview with Jayne Mansfield in 1956.

The same Jayne Mansfield created a fervor all her own at the Oscars a year later, when the actress's irrepressible bosoms got loose and hurt a small child while she was on stage presenting an award. America was so offended that Oscar ratings soared until 1974, when Robert Opal streaked naked across the stage during an acceptance speech and shocked a nation that had never seen a man naked before. Oscar ratings have never recovered.

Perhaps the grandmammary of all accidental TV nudity was The Faye Emerson Show in 1950, when the host's famous plunging neckline finally caught up with her and allowed her breasts to escape custody, giving the audience a view of female anatomy so shocking it caused the 1950's.

Over the next 50 years, various bits of accidental T&A found their way onto the small screen, from The Price is Right contestant in the 70's who had her unmentionables deblouse while she was coming on down (writing an early epitaph for the fad of snaps instead of buttons as clothing fasteners), to the 1976 episode of Charlie's Angels when star Farrah Fawcett finally threw her fans a nipple-shaped bone during an undercover prison sequence.

By the 1980's, real intentional nudity was finding its way to television screens, sapping the accidental kind of its ability to titillate. Bra commercials began using live lingerie models instead of hilarious mannequins or retarded women wearing bras on the outside of their clothes, and in 1989 Lonesome Dove viewers saw far more cowboy cock than they had ever bargained for. By the time America was treated to the sight of Dennis Franz's bare hairy ass on NYPD Blue in 1993, (prompting Jay Leno to remark "I only have a 20-inch TV, so I couldn't see it all") the nation had really seen too much and was calling for the networks to put some goddamn pants on these people.

Where does that leave us now? Can television nudity ever really be accidental and exciting again? We can only hope. Because despite ever-present nudity on cable and the Internet, network television retains its unique ability to shock and titillate people who've never heard of cable or the Internet.

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