I STILL THINK ABOUT JANET JACKSON, THAT INFAMOUS SUPERBOWL, AND THE MOMENT POP CULTURE CHANGED FOREVER

It's 2004. Somewhere MTV's Punk'd plays on a 20 inch screen. Somewhere somebody's jeans are aggressively low-rise. Somewhere a hot pink, possibly bedazzled Motorola Razr is being slammed shut. And somewhere I'm yelling at my sister to get off the phone so I can plug into the dial up. I got The Sims mods to download, damnit!

But somewhere, between ringtone culture and brutally slow internet speed, pop culture was about to change forever.

We are a part of the rhythm nation.

Janet was thirty-seven and had been in show business for thirty years, which made her the definition of established. She was the youngest of nine Jackson children, all of whom had been cultivated for fame by their father, Joe.

When she was fourteen, Joe arranged a contract for Janet with A&M Records; the result was two lackluster pop-soul albums. So, Janet cut professional ties with her father and moved to Minneapolis to work on a new album with a new sound: Control. It went to No. 1 when it was released in 1986 and became, for Janet, a statement of intent. This was a woman who ran her own show, both creatively and sexually. Sex was part of her brand from this point on. And sex was the way she showed the world she wasn’t her daddy’s little girl anymore.

It worked. She was a true crossover star.

Rhythm Nation 1814 positioned a multifaceted, dynamic Black woman as a leader, and as someone whose ideas, experiences and emotions mattered. (This was pre-Beyonce in her full Yonceness)

When All for You hit in 2001, her blossoming had reached full bloom. The song “Would You Mind” included lyrics so provocative that some retailers felt compelled to add parental advisory stickers. (Eventually, her label at the time, Virgin, issued a version with the "offending" track cut.) Luckily, none of this outrage did anything to stop All for You from becoming Janet’s fifth No. 1 album..in a row. 

By the time she performed at the Super Bowl in 2004, though, All for You was three years old. Pop moves fast. There were murmurs about relevance. Thirty-seven was suddenly perilously mature in an industry that worshipped youth so thoroughly it built a full-blown virginity cult around Britney Spears.

Janet knew the rules. She always had. So when she took the stage alongside the world’s most bankable young heartthrob at the time, the message was clear: she was still here. Still in control. Still very much part of the conversation.

What happened next would ensure that conversation took a sharp—and lasting—turn.

Things are getting worse, we have to make them better.

Super Bowl XXXVIII, 2004: Janet takes the stage, does her first number, “All for You,” wearing a pirate-inspired costume designed by Alexander McQueen. Her glossy black bustier has nods to fetishism, with a built-in choker and red lace trimming the cups. Yet the outfit is remarkably modest by the stripper chic standards of female singers in the aughts, thanks to three-quarter-length trousers and full-length sleeves. It's also modest by Janet’s own standards, considering she'd once appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with only a pair of male hands covering her boobs.

Following Janet, Nelly and..um..some guy... come onstage and deliver a breakneck mashup. This is followed by Kid Rock thrusting. For more conservative-minded audience members (and me), this is deeply uncomfortable. And it's, of course, about to get much worse. Janet returns to the stage for “Rhythm Nation”. Then Justin Timberlake emerges through the floor, and the two begin a performance of his song “Rock Your Body.” 

Timberlake is dressed much more casually than Janet when he arrives onstage. Just slacks, a T-shirt, and a jacket, making him a slightly incongruous addition to her show—the plumber on a call to a fetish club. He pursues her. She struts, teases. And as the song reaches its climax, they stand together on a riser at the center of the stage, in full view of the world. “Talk to me, boy,” she coos. He sings a promise back to her: “Bet I’ll have you naked by the end of this song.” Then he reaches across her torso, grabs the right cup of her bustier, and pulls. 

And this is the moment when something seems to go wrong.

Ninety million viewers would see Janet Jackson perform live on February 2, 2004. That’s ninety million people who would be exposed to her music—some for the first time—and who might become fans and ultimately buy her records or go to her concerts. In the end, it was ninety million people who saw her bare breast in a fumbled costume reveal that transformed her from the personification of sexual empowerment into a global avatar of indecency—and inadvertently changed the way we consume media forever.

This is Nipplegate. 

With music by our side to break the color lines.

In the days that followed, the language hardened. Commentators questioned Janet's judgment. Lawmakers scolded her character. And the Federal Communications Commission, yes that FCC, opened an investigation, ultimately levying fines and rewriting enforcement standards in response to a moment that lasted less than one second. The concern wasn’t really about nudity—broadcast television had survived far more revealing imagery for decades—but about who perpetrated it.

Almost immediately, the incident stopped being described as a technical mishap and started being treated as a moral failure, and one that belonged, almost exclusively, to Janet Jackson.

Janet’s music was removed from several platforms. Her invitation to the Grammys was revoked. And plans for her to star in a film were abandoned. Most notably, she was reportedly blacklisted by CBS head Les Moonves, who controlled the kinds of platforms that once sustained artists at her level.

Meanwhile, Timberlake not only performed at the Grammys but also won an award that year.

This imbalance reflected a deeper cultural logic, one in which Black women’s sexuality is treated as inherently excessive, volatile, and in need of regulation. Janet’s career had long embraced sexual expression as part of her artistic autonomy. But in this context, that autonomy was reframed as irresponsibility. Control—the very principle she had built her public identity around—was stripped of its legitimacy.

The backlash also revealed how quickly authority is revoked when a Black woman’s body disrupts a space imagined as neutral. Or national. Because the response wasn't simply misogyny; It was misogynoir, rooted in the idea that Black women must be corrected when they take up too much space, command too much attention, or assert too much agency—especially on the largest possible stage.

But what I'll always wonder is why the larger narrative wasn't how Jackson was seemingly violated and embarrassed in front of millions of people. Where was her justice? Where was her sympathy? Where was her support? Why did no one protect her?

Too often, Black women's pain is not humanized. It feels nearly impossible for people to empathize with us when we suffer, especially when society tries to convince us we don't feel the way other humans feel. We're "stronger".

Janet apologized. Then she apologized again. And again. Responsibility was accepted in full, even as the language around the incident grew more punitive by the day. But no apology Janet offered, either to herself or to the media, could stop the tornado of outrage. The tone was corrective, almost instructional, as if she were being asked to demonstrate contrition rather than offer explanation. Accountability, in this case, meant submission.

No matter the reason for what happened, can we all just finally agree that Janet was unfairly and inordinately punished. In hindsight, its actually tragic how much criticism and backlash Janet unnecessarily endured for committing exactly two crimes: first crime was being a woman and the second was being a Black woman.

This is the test, no struggle, no progress.

It's been over two decades since Justin Timberlake ripped off a piece of Janet Jackson’s bustier at the 2004 Super Bowl half-time show. Despite both singers chalking the moment up to an accident, it sparked international outrage and left Janet ostracized from a significant portion of the music industry for years.

In contrast, 23-year-old Timberlake (having just left the boyband ’NSync) went on to thrive.

If it hadn’t been for the boob, Janet would probably be remembered as the best bit of an otherwise sketchy halftime.

We like to think we’re far removed from America’s past, but situations like the treatment of Janet after the halftime show prove that what hasn’t changed quite as much is the reflex that night exposed. The speed with which a Black woman can be positioned as a problem. The ease with which correction masquerades as concern.

And now, with some distance, it’s easier to see the moment for what it was—and hopefully Janet Jackson for who she's always been. If there’s any hope in revisiting this now, it’s that this moment won’t eclipse everything that came before it. Because when you zoom out, it’s hard not to argue that if anything, it’s the world—not Janet Jackson—that still owes an apology.