The sexist double standard at the heart of Adam Levines Super Bowl halftime show

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Elahe Izadi.

When Adam Levine, Maroon 5’s lead singer, bared his chest to the world Sunday, it wasn’t the first time a star had an exposed nipple during the Super Bowl halftime show.

Levine’s move, though, was more overt than what previously transpired when, in 2004, Justin Timberlake ripped off Janet Jackson’s breast plate during their performance, leaving her nipple exposed on TV for less than a full second.

wow. so brave of adam levine to honor janet jackson's legacy by showing us both his nipples.

On Sunday, Big Boi performed “The Way You Move” (while wearing a very heavy fur coat, may we add). Maroon 5 went into the next song, and Levine ripped off his jacket, the universal sign for “Oh, I’m about to get serious in here.”

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Then they went into “Moves Like Jagger.” Levine stripped off his tank top, timed to the lyrics, “You wanted control so, we waited/I put on a show, now we’re naked,” and shimmied around with abandon.

Why is it okay to see Adam Levine’a boobs and not Janet Jackson’s?

Asking for a friend.

Yet Jackson’s incident attracted a $550,000 fine from the Federal Communications Commission (which was eventually thrown out on appeal), introduced “wardrobe malfunction” into our lexicon, helped inspire the creation of YouTube and became a flash point in the debate over regulating indecency.

Super Bowl halftime nipple rules feel inconsistent

friendly reminder that janet jackson got blacklisted for doing what adam levine just did

Both singers apologized immediately after and said the brief nudity was not intentional. Jackson suffered the brunt of the backlash; MTV, which produced the show, later blamed her as having engineered the stunt. And according to HuffPost, former CBS chief Les Moonves reportedly didn’t think Jackson was contrite enough in the aftermath, prevented her from appearing on the Grammys the following week and discouraged Viacom’s MTV and VH1 from playing her music. (Moonves was fired in 2018 after facing sexual misconduct allegations.)

Gendered expectations

While Timberlake’s career soared, Jackson’s career suffered greatly, something which her fans are still angry about (so much so that Timberlake’s 2018 halftime show spawned the #JusticeforJanet hashtag).

now I have to explain to my children that adam levine has nipples

According to the FCC, showing obscene, indecent and profane content on broadcast TV is prohibited by federal law. A well-known 1964 Supreme Court opinion — “I know it when I see it” when it comes to obscenity — influences the FCC’s rules, and the commission’s enforcement is driven by public complaints.

I’m more offended seeing Adam Levine’s nipples than I was Janet Jackson’s.

Will Levine’s exhibitionism attract the same kind of outrage to the FCC as the 2004 halftime show, when more than 500,000 people wrote to the agency to complain? Probably not. The female body is regarded very differently than the male body, on TV and in real life.

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