The Family (Or most of them)

The Family (Or most of them)
The Family

November 20, 2006

SIGH...NO WARDROBE MALFUNCTION

THE 94TH GREY CUP IS NOW HISTORY, WITH THE B.C. LIONS DEFEATING THE MONTREAL ALOUETTES 24-15 AT WINNIPEG'S CANAD INNS STADIUM.

But the biggest unreported story of all, which I am today trying to peddle to Entertainment Tonight for thousands of dollars, is that Canadian singer Nelly Furtado did NOT have a wardrobe malfunction.

The Grey Cup is Canada's older, but not nearly as media-driven, overly glitzy professional football equivalent of America's Super Bowl. And you know what happened two years ago in Texas, right?

Let me remind you (vid can be found at http://www.ifilm.com/video/2533319):



In a crass, obviously staged stunt that they later tried to pass off as completely accidental, American superstar Janet Jackson suffered a "wardrobe malfunction."

This happened after Justin Timberflake reached over and yanked off some conveniently removable thingy just as their song ended, exposing her right breast.

Janet just stood there in a stupid pose, enough time for millions if not billions of viewers around the world to see her nipple, etc., before she feigned a look of horror and disgust and covered up.


The world, for the most part, either laughed in hysterics at what was later called a "wardrobe malfunction" or they gasped.

Not surprisingly, the talkshow hosts had a field day. Miss Piggy had fun with it, and even Janet and Justin dolls found their way onto the market.

Now Canada, as we all know, is not the United States, although we do make some pretty stupid attempts to mimic the great elephant south of us. But there are some things we simply WON'T DO.

And judging by Sunday's half-time Grey Cup performance in -6 C temperatures in an outdoor stadium, one of our best-known female performers decided that a wardrobe malfunction is one of those things we won't do.

There were about 45,000 people in the stands and millions -- including some 350,000 in the U.S. and overseas -- tuning in on TV. The opportunity was there for some northern exposure.

Nelly, who had leapt into stardom with a bubblegum song called "I'm Like a Bird," has altered her image and her latest global hits are songs called Promiscuous (playing with this post) and Maneater.

She sang both tunes at half-time but try as she might, she could really be neither promiscuous nor much of a maneater, given the weather and this get-up, which made her somewhat less than sultry...

We can't report this as fact, but our suspicion is that Nelly was likely doing the Canadian thing -- dressing in layers -- to ward off the cold.

It therefore stands to reason she had eight pairs of long underwear and at least three thermal shirts on. A wardrobe malfunction would have taken quite some time to accomplish.