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‘One thing goes wrong and that’s it’: how Janet Jackson’s career was wrecked in a split second


Paula Varjack’s theatre show Nine Sixteenths looks back at the 2004 Super Bowl ‘Nipplegate’ controversy and what it reveals about the pressures on black women in the public eye

It has been just over two decades since Justin Timberlake ripped off a piece of Janet Jackson’s bustier at the 2004 Super Bowl half-time show – an incident that saw her right breast briefly exposed to 70,000 in-person spectators and more than 140 million TV viewers in what became known as “Nipplegate”. Despite both singers chalking the moment up to a “wardrobe malfunction”, it sparked international outrage and left Jackson, then 37, blacklisted from a significant portion of the music industry for years. Photograph: Christa HolkaNamed after the length of time Jackson’s adorned breast was exposed to the world, Varjack’s show puts “Nipplegate” into a wider context.

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