I Think About This A Lot: Diana Ross Jiggling Lil’ Kim’s Breast At The '99 VMAs
No, This Didn't Make 'The Cut'
1999 was a big year for my cultural consciousness — and my burgeoning preteen sexuality. MTV shaped my understanding of pop culture because it was my first exposure to things that weren’t aired on Nickelodeon, Disney or Cartoon Network, things that had been designed in Viacom’s offices to ensnare young people’s collective imagination and prey on their desire to be “cool”, whatever that meant. It was clear to me that coolness required becoming older, sure, but also hornier.
MTV’s infamous Spring Break programming mixed the hottest acts in pop music with some of the most depraved content shy of Girls Gone Wild or the Spice Channel (RIP). I wasn’t accessing porn online or making out with boys (or girls!) yet, so to see jiggling breasts and undergraduate hotties of both (all?) genders drunkenly gyrating was terrifying and alluring. I knew I wanted in, but I didn’t yet know how to get there. I soaked up everything, memorizing the music video credits and the sinewy curves that teased an enigmatic, elusive adult sexuality. It was equally important to me that I studied Hype Williams’s filmography AND the way that Jennifer Lopez groped her breasts in “If You Had My Love.” I’ve since seen a golf ball putted into someone’s asshole, but back then I thought I’d taken in the height of obscenity.
It’s not original to point out that “sex sells” — it is the bedrock of modern advertising and the basis of countless industries’ success — but the channel’s skillful intertwining of popular (if not specifically “pop”) music and graphic heterosexual revelry seared many images into my underdeveloped brain. However, the one I can’t shake is pretty gay: Diana Ross, Grand Dame of Motown, jiggling Lil’ Kim’s partially exposed breast while presenting at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.
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