15 Years Ago, Katy Perry’s Cleavage Was Too Much for ‘Sesame Street’
In 2025, every single piece of news we receive is tragic, disgusting or incredibly stupid. Oftentimes, it’s all three. But worry not! Incredibly stupid news isn’t a recent phenomenon, it’s a time honored American tradition. One example is a story that dominated headlines exactly 15 years ago. In September 2010, Katy Perry caused an uproar when she appeared in the Season 41 trailer for Sesame Street.
The two most stable groups of people in the U.S., parents and conservatives, were very unhappy with the amount of cleavage Perry was sporting. The pop star was wearing a lime green top that connected to a transparent mesh that went up to her shoulders. There was some chest on display, but nothing scandalous. At least, that’s what well adjusted people like myself and the people at Sesame Street thought.
But when the trailer for the show dropped, which included a parody of Perry’s hit song “Hot N’ Cold,” a horde of people were convinced that the pop star’s chest was going to ruin children’s lives. (The real threat would be an ever-increasing number of school shootings and cuts to education funding that defined the last decade.) The outrage resulted in Perry’s segment getting pulled from television on September 23, 2010.
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In a statement reported by the New York Times, Sesame Workshop said, “We use parodies and celebrity segments to interest adults in the show because we know that a child learns best when co-viewing with a parent or caregiver. We also value our viewers’ opinions and particularly those of parents. In light of the feedback we’ve received on the Katy Perry music video, which was released on YouTube only, we have decided we will not air the segment on the television broadcast of Sesame Street, which is aimed at preschoolers.”
A month after the segment was pulled, Sesame Street’s head writer Joey Mazzarino, told Vulture that he didn’t see a problem with Perry’s attire while they were filming. “I was there, and she had this mesh thing on top of it and I didn’t even notice,” Mazzarino said. “I didn’t think anything of it, and I’m pretty sensitive to things my daughter sees and it didn’t even strike me as anything. My daughter was there on set with us and she thought (Perry) looked like a Barbie doll, she thought she was beautiful and she loved to watch her. Not to say I don’t see other people’s point of view — I get it — but it didn’t hit me at first, at all.”
Perry ended up getting the last laugh, when she appeared on Saturday Night Live to mock the criticism leveraged against her. She got to display her especially impressive decollage sans filtering while Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler made jokes about how prudish American society is.
In light of recent events about free speech and censorship, reflecting on Perry’s boobocalypse at Sesame Street is an interesting look into the way Americans respond to material they disagree with. More frequently than not, it comes with a call for punishments and removal. Truly hot and cold.
