During Måneskin’s VMA performance, MTV draws a line for nudity — somewhere between butt cheeks and nipples

Damiano David’s butt cheeks took center stage at Sunday night’s MTV Video Music Awards. The lead vocalist for the Italian glam rock band Måneskin, David was performing the group’s hit song “Supermodel” in black chaps when, suddenly, the live camera cut away and filmed an empty section of arena seating for most of the song — leaving viewers confused and some even angry.

But the reason for the sudden misdirection wasn’t David’s butt cheeks, a visible “Kiss This” written across them. It was the controversial nipple: Bassist Victoria De Angelis’ top fell off, revealing a nip-slip.

So why is a man’s naked butt acceptable on U.S. TV, but a woman’s naked nipples aren’t?

Grid spoke with Moya Luckett, a media historian whose research focuses on gender and pop culture at New York University, about why it’s news when a nipple gets airtime.

How does this incident compare with past celebrity moments of nudity on MTV-produced shows — such as, most infamously, the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake exposed nipple during the Super Bowl?

I think the question of MTV as part of a conglomerate-owned enterprise that was fined and punished for its role in the wardrobe malfunction with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. When her nipple was shown, because it was on the Super Bowl, a program that was seen to be suitable for the family, it got to be written into MTV’s corporate logic that a nipple wasn’t going to be shown again.

And in some ways, it’s completely random. So, you can’t show a nipple, but you can have a guy in assless chaps. You can’t show a nipple, but you can have Miley Cyrus doing her thing with the [foam finger] — which, again, is seen as “outrageous” when none of it really is. It sort of allows MTV to have that image of, “We’re being racy, we’re being edgy,” but at the same time not doing anything that’s going to cause an advertiser boycott.

Is this MTV being cautious with its history in mind, or are Americans truly uncomfortable with seeing a nipple on TV?

I think it’s possibly too much of a cliché to say that all Europeans, for example, are completely comfortable with nudity. But this idea of a complete interdiction on seeing nipples is very much an American [reaction]. And of course, it’s become more global with things like social media — Twitter and Instagram coming along and censoring these images, or account holders being forced to put heart-shaped emojis to block anything that would cause [the platform] to pull pictures.

It’s tied to a certain way of thinking about the woman’s body — either hyper-sexualized or hyper-maternal — that either way this is something that people don’t want to see or are told they shouldn’t show. Men’s bodies aren’t framed as necessarily there for the same kind of public consumption as women’s frames.

How much does cable TV and the Federal Communications Commission play into the decision to pan away from the stage?

Cable channels are regulated by the FCC, which means the television, since its inception, has had to behave as a guest within the home. What constitutes a home, and how people behave [in society], has obviously changed a lot since television went national in the 1940s and ’50s in America.

But because it’s advertiser-supported, American TV isn’t going to be flashing a lot of nudity, but when it does, it’s going to be more veiled, after 9 o’clock at night Eastern time. And they’re not going to be doing anything that shocks Middle America.

Is the nip-slip even worth talking about anymore?

In some ways, it’s like every other event of its kind: It’s clickbait — something that people can read about online and then goes away. I think the language is old-fashioned — it’s been nearly 10 years since the Free the Nipple trend [a social media movement exposing the double standard of topless women being seen as explicit, but topless men as more socially acceptable].

We also have to look at it in terms of young people. There’s nothing particularly radical about this. They’ve seen these images, and far worse, online. We’ve had, on fashion runways, seasons of transparent clothes.

For a new generation who have different views about gender, quite rightly, in a much more progressive light, this is a fuss over nothing.

And how embarrassing it must be when you’re trying to do a performance that you’ve rehearsed several times and get the attention of the world [with music], you ended up getting the attention of the world because your top fell down.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.