During the 2000s, pop culture’s depictions of sex tended toward goofy, as if Hollywood had been run by teenage boys with cartoon eyes popping out of their skulls and mile-long tongues hanging out of their mouths. The sheer horniness of the aughts was unique from other eras in its total lack of subtlety, distinctly raunchy in a way that has fallen out of vogue. Think: Axe commercials where women want to have sex with you at the grocery store, buddy comedies about taking a road trip to lose your virginity, Maxim covers teasing a list of the best outdoor gear with the tagline “Spank Mother Nature!†Women sported low-rise pants and high-rise thongs, and men wore trucker hats that suggested careers in adult film.
Sex still sells, of course, but it’s packaged in self-awareness, layered with years of internet discourse about consent and kink and modern intimacy. Shows like Normal People are lauded for their “realistic†sex scenes — slow to start, sometimes nervous, and free from cinematic orgasms. Euphoria takes the opposite approach with flashy soft-core cinema, Skinemax with an HBO budget. Both shows employ intimacy coordinators, whom directors routinely bring in to protect actors “doing hyper-exposed work.â€
The decline of early-aughts horny culture can be attributed to a few main developments. It was a slow death, brought forth in part by the internet’s tightening grip on our personal lives and the media’s recognition of women as … people. As porn and porn-adjacent content became available at the tap of a touchscreen (Pornhub launched in 2007, Instagram in 2010), sex bled into pop culture with less frequency. Today, sex is dispersed across the web. Everyone can have their own personalized, algorithmically curated e-stash.
The bygone era, which for the purpose of this list will be referred to as Horny Culture, was tainted by exploitation, and it’s worth exploring how we got there and how we got out. The following list is a taxonomy of the aughts’ horniest pop-culture moments, forgotten formative memories, the Cosmo tips that are forever burned into our brains. (You can measure your boob size by comparing them to fruit; Katy Perry allegedly has C-cups, or, grapefruits.) This list is an exercise in horny anthropology, an attempt to establish the 2000s Horny Culture canon — the good, the (mostly) bad, and the absurd.
Fashion
Bratz Dolls
Years before Kylie Jenner tightened and plumped her face to resemble that of a sexy alien cub, Bratz dolls were drawing the Instagram Face blueprint. Their tiny noses, huge glossy lips, and bedroom eyes mirror the rhinoplasties, fillers, and premature face-lifts that have become commonplace among models, influencers, and airbrushed regulars. (Footless legs and detachable shoes have yet to make it into mainstream pop culture.)
In 2005, four years after Bratz launched, global sales were $2 billion. By 2006, Bratz had roughly 40 percent of the fashion-doll market. Yes, “the girls with the passion for fashion†caused quite a stir in good ways and bad. Parents expressed concern over the dolls’ oversexualized look and unrealistic body proportions. They weren’t wrong, but they were admitting to feeling sexually confused about a ten-inch plastic doll, and that is a testament to Bratz’s role in horny-culture history.
American Apparel
If you lived in a major city or frequented the “hipster†corners of the internet (Carles, r u there?) in the 2000s, you’ll remember that the American Apparel girls were everywhere. You could see them on billboards, wheat-pasted to construction sites, printed on the back cover of Vice magazine. The girls wore next to nothing, presumably to accentuate the one thing that they were wearing, like thigh-high tube socks or a see-through bra or a crop top emblazoned with the words “Legalize L.A.†Some of the ads included brief bios of the models that read like a dating profile or a trading card or a blurb for a back-page escort service. They had names like Dana and Steffi. Most of the American Apparel girls were relative unknowns, and the company prided itself on casting “regular†people in its campaigns, though the porn actress Lauren Phoenix posed for one especially memorable ad.
As American Apparel’s profile rose, scrutiny over the company’s ads intensified, and it didn’t help matters that founder Dov Charney was accused ad nauseam of sexually harassing employees, to the extent that he was eventually fired by the board. Before declaring bankruptcy in 2017, American Apparel toned down its marketing aesthetic. Less naked-girl-does-the-splits, and more quirky-Tumblr-user-on-a-roof.
Pants With Stuff Written on the Butt
There’s something vaguely sexual about a matchy-matchy outfit. And there’s something very clearly sexual about pants that read “Juicy†across the ass. Juicy Couture’s iconic velour and terry-cloth tracksuits, introduced in 2001, defined an era of shallow luxury and excess. Throughout the aughts, paparazzi faves like Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and Britney Spears ushered the style into their Hollywood-bad-girl brand.
What’s more (horny), Juicy’s slim-fitting pants started the words-on-the-butt trend that spread from boardwalk sweatpants (“There Goes Trouble,†“Thing 1,†etc.) to Victoria’s Secret. In 2008, Juicy filed suit against the lingerie giant, claiming its “PINKâ€-emblazoned bottoms were a blatant knockoff. Words-on-the-butt was such a cultural moment that schools introduced no-phrase-clothes dress codes.
Whale Tail
There was a time when women could be seen strutting around in low-rise denim with their g-strings perched on their hip bones, as if to communicate: “There’s an ass down there!†According to Refinery 29, the look first emerged at Jean Paul Gaultier’s spring 1997 fashion show but wouldn’t hit the mainstream until the early aughts, when the usual suspects (Britney, Christina, Paris) were photographed thongs out at a smattering of red-carpet events. (At the MTV VMAs in 2000, Britney wore a bedazzled g-string under a pair of nude low-rise pants for her performance of “Oops I Did It Again.â€) In 2003, a full episode of the teen drama Degrassi revolved around a character’s exposed blue tail (the actress recently recorded a TikTok in the iconic outfit). The trend died mid-decade, but if we’re lucky (or very, very unlucky), it’ll make a bold return in the 2020s now that Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez, Bella Hadid, and Haley Bieber, among others, have been spotted sporting whale tails.
TV
Reality Dating Shows
The reality dating show didn’t begin when The Bachelor premiered in 2002, but The Bachelor did make the genre ubiquitous. Now, it seems there’s at least one on practically every network, but in the early 2000s, the dating-show industrial complex was just beginning to launch. Following the success of The Bachelor (still running after 20 years), networks developed their own iterations. The concept was simple enough: Get a bunch of singles in a house together, funnel them alcohol, then watch them fall in love or fall apart (usually the latter).
Though The Bachelor typically maintained an air of chastity (it’s on ABC, after all), the lucky women who make it to the top three are typically invited to stay overnight in the Fantasy Suite, where they (presumably) fuck the Bachelor. When VH1 launched Flavor of Love, starring Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav, the network helped set a new precedent: What if the Fantasy Suite isn’t something viewers needed to wait on? Better yet, what if this whole house was a Fantasy Suite? What if, hear me out, we get 30 women to sleep in one room, summer camp style, and encourage violence?
Flavor of Love was a sex-fueled hit. It ran for three seasons and spawned offshoots I Love New York, Charm School, and I Love Money. In the first episode, the women line up and Flav names them based on first impressions, then personally sticks a name tag on the boob or ass cheek of his choosing. “The reason why I pick nicknames is because I knew I couldn’t remember their real names,†he explains in a season-one confessional. Some of the nicknames landed better than others; as you might imagine, the girls with names like Cherry and Deelishis make it farther in the show than the ones dubbed Oyster and Wire.
The success of Flavor of Love brought on Rock of Love With Bret Michaels. MTV’s answer to VH1’s two big hits was A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila, wherein men and women competed for the bisexual Myspace-famous star’s affection. MTV further cornered the horny-teen reality-TV market with gamified dating shows like Next, which featured a bus filled with singles all gunning for a shot with the bachelor or bachelorette standing on the outside. Contestants would emerge one by one, accompanied by trading-card-like bios — one memorable bio reads “Ashley, 20. Collects Starburst wrappers. Idolizes Bob Barker. Pooped in a box and mailed it to her ex-boyfriend.†They simply don’t make them like this anymore.
Teen Soaps
Every teen soap-ad campaign looked more or less the same. A collection of lithe, attractive, mostly white 20-somethings lean against one another in the kind of casual repose that communicates “Yeah, we fuck.†You’ve seen the posters for One Tree Hill, The OC, and Dawson’s Creek. But it was Gossip Girl that really changed the game beginning with its mid-season-one ad campaign, which captured Blair, Serena, Chuck, and Nate in compromising poses, the featured press quotes claiming the show to be “Mind-blowingly inappropriate,†“Every parent’s worst nightmare,†and “A piece of nasty work.†The show wasn’t as horny as the adverts made us believe, aside from its stylish soft-core sex scenes and Chuck’s high-school-playboy character (remember when he opened a burlesque club?), but the scandalizing campaign certainly raised the bar for teen dramas. Could Veronica’s speakeasy–slash–rum distillery in Riverdale exist without Gossip Girl? Doubtful.
GQ’s Glee Spread
Glee was an emblem of feel-good Obama-era entertainment. Attractive, white-toothed high-schoolers break into song. The stakes are low. The cast is diverse. One character is gay. And, as this list demonstrates, a prominent theme in horny culture (and also, like, the Bible, I guess) is the sullying of something the public deems “pure.†Of course, people want to see those Glee kids in push-up bras and knee socks, said GQ and Terry Richardson. It was 2010, and the photo shoot was very much of its preceding decade, the end of an era. (Richardson would later be ousted by Condé Nast for alleged sexual misconduct.)
Now, allow us to crack open our history books for a moment and examine why this shoot, which would’ve likely been the subject of praise from 2000 to 2006, received backlash. If you turn to page 69, you’ll see that Pornhub launched in 2007, the same year Apple introduced the iPhone. 2007 can be understood as the soft start of the rapid proliferation of online porn. From 2000 to 2006, the schoolgirl fantasy wasn’t available in your pocket at all times. Many would have celebrated the half-naked cast of Glee on a magazine cover; those who felt less enthusiastic would’ve had fewer forums to share.
Commercials
Sex sells, and it really sold from the late ’90s through the 2000s. Before commercials neutered their male characters (the stay-at-home dad! The doofy husband who always misplaces the Swiffer!), the prime-time ad universe had crude humor and dude stuff at its center. Women in bikinis sudsed up cars while AC/DC blared through the garage. A Carl’s Jr. cheeseburger could induce a full-body orgasm. A sexy lady cop pulled over professional race-car driver Danica Patrick (log on to godaddy.com to see what happens next.)
You can’t talk about horny commercials without highlighting Axe, the signature scent of rancid teenage boys. Axe commercials said, “Hey, you sweaty freak. Want six babes to grope you at the grocery store? How about the library? Dentist’s office? In ancient Greece? Buy our poison spray.†The Bom Chicka Wah Wah campaign — a series of ads in which women convulse and undress at the slightest whiff of Axe, almost scatting the titular slogan — is horny commercial canon.
Movies
The Girl(s) Next Door
The original girl next door … Who was she? Betty in the original Archie comics? Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man? The long-standing trope got decidedly hornier in the 2000s with the 2004 release of Luke Greenfield’s The Girl Next Door. In it, a porn star named Danielle (Elisha Cuthbert) moves into the house next door to dorky Matthew (Emile Hirsch), and the two begin a relationship. The next year, E!’s The Girls Next Door premiered, a reality show chronicling the lives of women living in the Playboy Mansion and boning Hugh Hefner. Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me†video is a naïve throwback by comparison, but it does lead us to another feature of the era …
Blondes vs. Brunettes
Blondes and brunettes were not to be friends in the 2000s. There are, as always, a few exceptions to the rule (see The Sweetest Thing’s “Penis Song†below), but the era’s typical teen-movie formula pitted the two against each other (see Regina George and Gretchen Wiener’s strained relationship in Mean Girls). According to the trope, blonde girls are hot and mean, brown-haired girls are smart. A girl is blonde or a girl is brunette, and there are no other types of girls.
The binary dates back to Marilyn Monroe’s old Hollywood. (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes — but they also love brunettes, because only beautiful women are allowed in movies!) Still, it found new life in the aughts. Fast-fashion retailers were chomping at the bit to stereotype blondes and brunettes. It was normal, nay, encouraged that girls wore shirts declaring their hair color. Surely you remember seeing “Brunettes Have More Fun†or “Smart Blonde†stamped across thin tees at Abercrombie. The contrived girl-on-girl rivalry, a motif of its time, imparts this playful brand of misogyny, another big theme that ran through 2000s pop culture. Life imitates art. Social hierarchies assembled accordingly.
The Raunchy Sex Comedy
In the early 2000s, a good fraction of comedy plots were built around a couple of guys trying to get laid. There were various iterations of this formula. In the American Pie franchise and Superbad, the guys set out to lose their virginities before college. In The 40 Year Old Virgin, the guy sets out to lose his virginity and he’s 40 years old. In Sex Drive, the guy drives across the country to lose his virginity. In EuroTrip, the guys travel to Europe for sex. In Road Trip, the guys drive from New York to Texas to track down an incriminating sex tape. In Knocked Up, she’s pregnant!
Around 2008, Big Comedy decided to grant female characters nonsexual airtime and depth beyond their cleavages. 2008 saw Zack and Miri Make a Porno, The House Bunny, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, three genuinely funny raunchy comedies with multidimensional women. I consider this “Third Wave sex comedy†(TWSC), a promising start that reached a stride but didn’t quite pan out. TWSC continued on strong with Jennifer’s Body (see below) and I Love You Man in 2009 through 2011 with Bridesmaids.
It’s unclear why or what, but something happened after Bridesmaids. The following attempts at sex comedy — like Movie 43 and Sex Tape — flopped. We are living through post-sex comedy (PSC) times, where movies like Blockers, once rumored to be the next gen Superbad, are too heartfelt to be funny. It’s been years since we’ve seen a proper sex comedy, and it’s possible we’re on the precipice of a post-PSC era. The people need a low-stakes laugh; There has to be some comedic middle ground between wholesome family fun and gross misogyny. We have to let Maya Rudolph’s character shit in the street!
School
When did school become so horny? It’s a big question, one that we may be unable to answer in explicit terms, but we have a few hypotheses to offer. 1970s cultural touchstones like Animal House and National Lampoon surely had something to do with it, and by the 2000s raunchy comedies set on campus made the word college synonymous with Solo cups strewn across frat-house lawns, MTV’s spring break, toga parties, and, somewhat inexplicably, girls wrestling in mud pits. Old School, Slackers, Loser, The House Bunny — the list goes on, and it extends to outsize representation of high school, too. We got Bring It On, The New Guy — too many to list — but there’s one oft-forgotten school-based horny film that’s worth highlighting …for posterity.
100 Girls came out in 2000. It’s about a college student named Matthew (Jonathan Tucker) who gets trapped in a dark elevator with an unseen woman, has sex with the unseen woman, and wakes up the next morning (still in the elevator) alone with a pair of the unseen woman’s underwear. He goes on a quest to find his mystery girl, which turns out to be a difficult task because her dorm is home to — you guessed it — 100 girls. But the number of girls is hardly the most insane part of this movie. Matthew’s roommate Rod (James DeBello) constantly preaches “penile power,†which involves attaching weights to his dick to make it grow. A couch falls on one of Matthew’s crushes, ultimately crushing her (ha). Matthew later decides his quest might move along faster if he dresses in drag (reasonable!). The high jinks don’t stop there! Rod and a guy named Crick (Johnny Green) flirt with Matthew in drag, eventually leading Matthew to break Rod’s penile power device, bite off Crick’s tongue, and arrest Crick for sexual assault. It’s an absolute must-see!
Jennifer’s Body
Megan Fox was a pop-culture sex symbol during the Obama years and not a second longer (that is, until her second life in the modern Zeitgeist, thanks to her highly photogenic relationship with Machine Gun Kelly). Fox had her breakthrough role as Hot Girl Who Fix Car in 2007’s live-action Transformers film. Two years later, she starred in the horny camp horror masterpiece Jennifer’s Body, in which she plays an otherworldly sex demon; or, a high-school girl who eats men to maintain her youth and vitality. The movie is filled with skimpy tops that went out of style soon after filming, slow-motion sauntering, lesbian sex scenes that have no apparent utility in the plot, and lines like “It smells like Thai food in here. Have you guys been fucking?!†It’s been retrospectively referred to as a “forgotten feminist classic.â€
Spoof Comedies
Ah! To be a fly on the wall of the Scary Movie writers’ room, specifically in the four minutes it must’ve taken to write that one party sequence wherein Bobby (Jon Abrahams) asks Cindy (Anna Faris) to give him a blowjob. “It’s like sucking on a Tootsie Roll Pop,†he coaches before Cindy gives him a blowie so intense that he cums like Old Faithful, shaking the house and plastering her to the bedroom ceiling. The Scary Movie franchise, for the uninitiated, spanned five films, all of which brim with the kind of sex jokes designed to be retold in the middle-school cafeteria. For younger millennials, the franchise was a gateway to the horror classics it spoofed and, despite being unquestionably terrible, there are too many memorable scenes to distill into a single blurb. Carmen Electra’s busted implants, the incubus in “Paranormal sexual Activityâ€, Miss Fellatio…
Spoof comedies were big during the horny years. Scary Movie creators Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer first found success in 1996 with Spy Hard, but they really met their moment by the mid-aughts. The duo went on to make a slew of terrible films—Date Movie, Disaster Movie, and Epic Movie—all set in the same universe.
The Sweetest Thing’s Penis Song
Per a YouTube commenter, The Sweetest Thing is “along the lines of Dumb and Dumber but a bit smarter and with ladies. :D :D†It’s a forgettable film, but the song Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate, and Selma Blair perform in a Chinese restaurant about penis girth is horny culture at its most explicit and unhinged. These women deserve an Oscar for being able to sing lines like, “My body is a movie and your penis is the star,†without snort-laughing. Enjoy.
Music
“Milkshakeâ€
Back in 2003, the Neptunes wrote and produced an R&B dance track called “Milkshake†with the hopes of landing it on Britney Spears’s fourth studio album, In the Zone. When Spears rejected “Milkshake,†it was given to a lesser-known pop star named Kelis. The song would go on to become an early-aughts horny-culture anthem, making Kelis a horny high priestess. “Milkshake†peaked at No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard “Hot 100†the year it was released. It also earned an iconic spot in Mean Girls, playing in the background as the Plastics arrive at Regina George’s mansion, where her mom offers them condoms and her kid sister belly-dances in front of the TV.
From the sultry Spanish guitar and undulating buzz right down to the cheeky ding!, “Milkshake†is arching an eyebrow and throwing a wink before Kelis even says a word. She sings about her milkshake, the talk of the town. Men travel far and wide to get to the yard, the location of said blended ice-cream treat. (Folks, she’s talking about her boobs.) “La la la la,†Kelis taunts. “Warm it up, the boys are waiting.†The effect is an almost threatening sexual aura, like performing a strip tease with an aggressive frown.
“My Humpsâ€
If you thought “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard†was peak horny culture, wait until you check out “my lovely lady lumps.†“My Humps†is a close relative of “Milkshake,†a younger cousin with less social grace. Where “Milkshake†has some earnest sex appeal, “My Humps†is pure gag, an unintentional parody of itself, the essence of mid-2000s pop sexuality. It’s goofy and in-your-face, clumsy without missing a beat. It’s horny to the point of being unsexy. There isn’t a single ounce of mystique. Its music video features several halter tops and a fedora. The melodramatic, almost ominous cadence of “she’s got me spending†sounds like it belongs in Fiddler on the Roof. And let us not forget the horny baby breakdown: “Mix your milk with my Coco Puffs / Milky, milky coco / Mix your milk with my Coco Puffs / Milky, milky right.†Will.i.am initially wrote “My Humps†for the Pussycat Dolls, who instead opted to go with the equally batshit “Beep.â€
The Pussycat Dolls
Originally conceived as a modern burlesque troupe, the Pussycat Dolls were founded in the mid-’90s by choreographer Robin Antin. The group held a residency at L.A.’s Viper Room before eventually moving to the Roxy, where they performed bygone hits from the ’50s and ’60s. In the early days, the group was fronted by Christina Applegate and Carla Kama, though the Dolls occasionally featured Christina Aguilera, and Carmen Electra was the lead vocalist for two years. In 1999, PCD’s profile rose when some of the Dolls were featured in Playboy, and in 2002 they were photographed for Maxim.
As interest in the group accelerated, Jimmy Iovine signed PCD to Interscope with the intention of revamping them into a mainstream pop act. After a recasting, Nicole Scherzinger emerged as the lead performer on the group’s self-titled debut album, which included breakout hits “Don’t Cha,†“Buttons,†and “Stickwitchu.†The following year, Antin and the Dolls hosted the CW reality show The Search for the Next Doll, wherein contestants competed to become the seventh (!) member of the Pussycat Dolls. The show ended after two seasons, and the group had unceremoniously disbanded by the decade’s end, but not before leaving us with “Beep.â€
Will.i.am wrote “Beep†for PCD after the girl group rejected “My Humps.†They likely wanted to go for a coquettish sex appeal, rather than the blatant salivating dog lyricism of “My Humps.†But “Beep†is just “My Humps†featuring a sound we had so gotten used to in the golden age of reality TV. By censoring the obvious — “It’s funny how a man only thinks about the *beep* / You got real big brains but I’m looking at your *beep*/ … / Imma do my thing while you’re playing with your *beep*â€Â — they draw more attention to its horny comedy.
Songs About Sweets
Candy and sex has long been a winning lyrical combination for pop music. And while the candy-sex metaphor wasn’t invented in the aughts — it can be traced back farther than Roy Orbison’s 1965 track “Sugar and Honey†— the Top 40 radio rotation reached peak euphemism during the late ’90s and 2000s. Sex and candy took over alt-rock stations with Marcy Playground’s 1997 hit “Sex and Candy.†Mandy Moore released her debut single “Candy†in 1999. 112’s P.Diddy-produced “Peaches and Cream†climbed the Billboard charts in 2001. But the song that really put sugar on the map was “Milkshake†(see above). The years following its 2003 release heard Ciara’s “Goodies,†50 Cent’s “Candy Shop,†Trick Daddy’s “Sugar (Gimme Some),†D4L’s “Laffy Taffy,†and Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop.†In 2006, the music video for Fergie’s “Fergalicious†asked, “What if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was actually just the opening scenes of a soft-core porn?â€
“Ass Like Thatâ€
The way you shake it, I can’t believe it
I ain’t never seen an ass like that
The way you move it, you make my pee-pee go
D-doing, doing, doing
-Eminem
Celebrity
Jessica Simpson
Tabloids portrayed Jessica Simpson as a dumb-dumb sex-bot of a woman for a great deal of her career, despite the fact that she wore a purity ring (a gift from her preacher father when she was 12 years old) and actually kept the implied promise. At a certain point in time, Simpson was inescapable. She appeared in every commercial, many of which involved pizza delivery. She had (has?) a fashion line. She launched a collection of edible cosmetics, which would later lead to several lawsuits and unfavorable reviews from customers who contracted yeast infections and were attacked by bees. She graced the covers of tabloids and glossies alike. Even my mom (who doesn’t own a cell phone or know how to turn on the VCR, even in the year 2022) knew who Jessica Simpson was. She rose to stardom as a wholesome singer with Christian roots, a familiar formula perfected by Britney Spears, but became a pop-culture fixture in her own right as she ascended to the kind of once-in-a-lifetime celebrity one can only really compare to Kim Kardashian. And would the Kardashians even be possible without Jessica Simpson?
When she married 98 Degrees singer Nick Lachey, the couple was featured on MTV’s Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica, which showcased Simpson’s bimbo persona and made Lachey seem like an absolute thumb by comparison. (In one memorable scene, Simpson asks Lachey if she’s eating “chicken or fish,†since the can says “Chicken of the Sea.â€) It was one of the first examples of a reality show chronicling “family life,†alongside Meet the Osbournes. After they divorced in 2005, Simpson made her film debut in The Dukes of Hazzard as Daisy Duke, and if you were anywhere near a television in those days, you will recall having seen the “These Boots Are Made for Walking†video, wherein Simpson plays a saucy bartender at some country dive and performs alongside Willie Nelson. By the final chorus, she’s in a bikini washing the Hazzards’ car, a Dodge Charger with a Confederate flag printed on the roof. The video was later spoofed in P!nk’s video for “Stupid Girls†and a Super Bowl ad for Pizza Hut.
From there, Simpson was cast in a smattering of terrible comedies including Employee of the Month, Blonde Ambition, and The Love Guru, usually playing a character who was perceived as basically being Jessica Simpson by another name (and in the case of The Love Guru, she was credited as herself). Tabloids at the time dithered over her rocky relationship with John Mayer and later Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, whose performance was so bad at the time that fans started referring to her as “Yoko Romo.†In 2020 Simpson published her memoir, Open Book, which chronicles these years in some detail and reflects on the intense public scrutiny she faced after gaining weight following the birth of her first child. That led her to become a brand ambassador for — what else? — Weight Watchers.
Purity Rings
There’s nothing hornier than celibacy. The purity-ring craze took off when Disney entered the pop-music industry with stars like the Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Hilary Duff, Aly & AJ, and Miley Cyrus. It was, in some respects, a reaction to the intense sexualization of teens in the tabloids. Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson were subjected to scrutiny over whether they’d lost their virginity yet, and Disney’s brand depended on a squeaky clean set of stars to guide them into a new market. (For more on this, read Jezebel’s comprehensive article “The Rise and Fall of the Pop Star Purity Ring.â€) There was a time when the silver bands could be seen all over red-carpet events geared toward a younger set, but to call the rings “cool†would be a vast overstatement, and in boasting their celibacy, these teen stars would be even more sexualized. What were they doing if they weren’t fucking? God only knows.
Madonna and Britney Kiss at the VMAs
The 2003 VMAs provide a bittersweet reminder of what televised live events were like in the days of linear cable. Let me walk you through it because there’s a lot going on. Too much, even. There is, in fact, so much going on that any attempt at analysis would be utterly pointless.
The opening beat of “Like a Virgin†plays while tulle-clad toddlers drop fists of flower petals in the general direction of a cheering audience. A veiled woman in a sexy, Madonna-inspired wedding-dress-corset situation rises onto the stage, which has been made to look like a cake. She starts to sing, her voice producing the unmistakable breathy-vocal-fry hybrid of pop sensation Britney Spears. Could it be? The veil comes off. It is! Flash to an unamused Avril Lavigne and Kelly Osbourne. Do I hear wedding bells? Is that … an extremely tan, black-haired Christina Aguilera? In a matching white outfit? Flash to a very unamused Mary J. Blige.
The of-the-moment icons crawl and writhe around a bit, pause, and feign surprise at Madonna, who takes the stage in a damn top hat. It’s at this point that Britney places the microphone in her cleavage for safekeeping as she and Christina strut hand in hand with Madonna. Madonna removes the garter from Christina’s thigh, turns to open-mouth kiss Britney for a good five seconds, then offers Christina a quick peck before introducing Missy Elliott: “YO YO YO WHO THAT BE!†(It be Missy Elliott.) The kiss is rumored to have solidified Britney and Christina’s ongoing rivalry, which was especially strong (and publicized) at the time. Madonna had spoken. She chose Britney.
Paparazzi Party Girls
In 1999, David Kamp predicted the “Tabloid Decade†following the ’90s “tabloidification of news, culture, and even human behavior.†Kamp cites “advanced technology and increased vulgarity … the dance between these factors, the downloadable and the down-and-dirty, that has led to the Tabloid Decade’s particularly explicit brand of tabloidism. That has enabled us to learn not only that the president was a philanderer but also that he inserted a cigar into the vagina of a young lady named Monica S. Lewinsky.â€
He was right. A tabloid-centric kind of celebrity rose from 2000 to 2007, mostly made up of former child stars “gone bad†and young women who were famous for being famous. Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears were the holy trinity, the leading ladies. But there were also side characters like Ashlee Simpson, the Olsen Twins, and, of course, Tara Reid. Paparazzi captured the bygone party scene’s Champagne towers, stretch limos, crotch shots, and nip slips. Average readers got a wicked mix of jealousy, admiration, and Schadenfreude, marveling at the glamour and laughing when a dude with a camera pulled back the velvet curtain to expose Tara Reid’s boob for the third time.
A splashy 2004 cover of Us magazine declared “Teens Gone Wild!†over three grinning starlets— Hillary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, and Mischa Barton. “Older men, all-night partying, extreme PDA.†The women appear more “school-picture day†than the copy might lead you to believe. But the cover is designed to look … familiar, resembling a different kind of magazine, DVD, or old VHS tape. In November 2006, the front page of the New York Post featured a photo of Lindsay, Britney, and Paris in the front seat of a car, looking high on nightlife (among other things), their eyes vacant. The headline reads, in bold impact font, “BIMBO SUMMIT.†These were the original influencers.
When Britney was filmed shaving her head and smashing a pap’s car window with an umbrella in 2007, the tabloid era began to shatter. Things got dark as the depths of the psychological damage done by daily harassment of these young stars came to light. Keeping Up With the Kardashians aired that year, when Kim was best known for being friends with Paris Hilton — an occasional guest in her paparazzi shots — and a victim of a leaked sex tape scandal. A new reign began.