Adult entertainment, skin-baring outfits, and drunken shenanigans:
there are plenty of ways for squeaky-clean celebs to shed their wholesome images.
If you compare the videos for Rihanna's 2005 debut single "Pon de Replay" and
2013's "Pour It Up," you'll notice a night and day difference. The former shows a
young Rihanna breaking out some dance moves while rocking a midriff-baring half-shirt,
while the latter features her sporting bedazzled underwear while sitting on a throne.
When Rihanna began promoting her Savage X Fenty lingerie company, it was one thirst trap photo
after another, which only elevated her sex symbol status. In 2012, Esquire called her "The Sexiest
Woman Alive." That same year, she spoke about her image with Oprah Winfrey, as she admitted,
"That's not my goal, that's not something I'm like, 'Oh my gosh! I had a great
achievement here with this title.' I don't really even understand that."
"It's inaccurate but flattering, to say the least. I definitely was
excited about that. I thought it was cute."
And in an interview with GQ also in 2012, Rihanna said that she was initially confused
about her reputation as a sex symbol, but she understood it more as time went on.
In 1998, Maitland Ward joined the cast of the classic ABC TGIF sitcom Boy Meets
World. But she ultimately didn't find the gig very fulfilling. For one thing,
she thought that her character Rachel McGuire didn't have enough to do. Plus, there was another
side of her personality that she wasn't able to express. Eventually, she got her opportunity to
express that side when she became an adult film actor. As she revealed to In Touch Weekly in 2019,
"It started slowly. It all started when I started doing cosplay, which I really genuinely love doing
and people started giving me attention for it, and I wore sexy outfits. I have always sort
of been an exhibitionist, like always. I love dressing sexy in public and things like that."
In a 2021 interview with Us Weekly, Ward noted that people had told her she'd always play a
sitcom girl or soccer mom type, which also fueled her journey into adult entertainment.
Chloe Bailey undoubtedly had a wholesome image as one half of the R&B sister duo
Chloe x Halle. But nowadays, if you take a look at her Instagram,
you'll see her in outfits that bare plenty of skin. Of course,
that's not uncommon or inappropriate for a woman in her twenties, but fans of the singer-actor were
nonetheless taken aback with this new image, which coincided with the launch of her solo career.
In 2023, Bailey appeared in the Amazon horror series Swarm, which included a
strikingly raunchy sex scene. Some of her fans were aghast, with one commenting on Instagram,
"Girl I'm disappointed. That can't be you in Swarm. You are soooo much better than that."
Bailey later admitted that the backlash hurt and confused her, as she told People Magazine,
"I never understood it. I'd look at my peers and be like, 'We're all the same
age. They're showing as much as me, if not more. But if I do it, I'm ridiculed to the
max.' As much as I would see it and try to act like it didn't affect or bother me, it would."
"We all kind of have breaking points."
One moment you're a seemingly innocent guitar-strumming kid with a famous haircut,
the next you're posing for a mugshot. At least, that's how it's gone for Justin Bieber. On his
debut single "One Time" in 2009, he sang about having butterflies in his stomach
while meeting his dream girl. But then just a few years later in 2013, he was getting into
all sorts of trouble. That was when he tried to fight a paparazzo in London, and he was
also seen urinating in a bucket inside of a club while insulting former President Bill Clinton.
On top of all that, he was also reportedly spotted coming out of a Brazilian brothel.
Then in 2014, Bieber was arrested in Miami for drag racing while intoxicated. And that
was right before he turned himself in to Canadian authorities after being accused
of assaulting a limousine driver. As he explained to Seventeen in 2015,
"I was rebelling a little bit. I was getting cockier and cockier. I
didn't have people to check me. I looked back and I was disappointed in myself."
In 1994, MC Hammer released his fifth album, The Funky Headhunter, on which he seemed to adopt a
gangsta rap image. On the cover, he sported an all black outfit, including a skull cap, which looked
pretty similar to the signature style of seminal rap group N.W.A. Hammer also dropped the "MC" from
his name, which seemed to be another sign that he wanted the rap crowd to take him more seriously.
Before all that, Hammer had become an international superstar with a
family-friendly style of rap. He was also famous for his outfits, which typically included super
baggy pants. But along with that success came backlash, especially from rap purists, who
believed that Hammer wasn't making real hip-hop, but commercialized pop-rap instead. In a 1997
interview with journalist Davey D, Hammer denied that he'd changed his image, as he explained,
"When we say image, we have to understand that clothing does not change a person's character,
so I've never done what they call gangsta rap, that's not my thing. [...] No one is wearing
what they wore in '88 or '89. People wanted to say 'Oh well, Hammer got on the clothes
that people are wearing today, he must be a hard core gangsta,' but the music remained the same."
In 2013, Hannah Montana appeared to be pretty far back in the rearview mirror for Miley Cyrus. That
was the year that her new bad girl image was on full display at the MTV Video Music Awards, as she
unforgettably performed alongside Robin Thicke and twerked in front of them. Many thought she went
too far, including the Parents Television Council. They released a statement that read in part,
"MTV marketed adults-only material to children while falsely manipulating
the content rating to make parents think the content was safe for their children."
"And this is true: I actually got a complaint from the inventor of the giant foam finger."
The responses to Cyrus' 2014 Bangerz tour were quite similar. The concerts
featured a dancer dressed as a joint, as well as the singer herself wearing
skimpy outfits and twerking some more. Some attendees at a show in Vancouver reportedly
walked out because they were so disgusted. Cyrus responded to the backlash on Twitter
by posting a photo of herself wearing one of her tour outfits and writing,
"You can't say I didn't warn you. Now sit back relax & enjoy the show."
When Beyoncé was in Destiny's Child, the band was managed by her father Mathew Knowles,
which probably explains why their whole look and vibe were rather PG.
But when you compare that to something like the video for Beyoncé's 2014 solo
single "Partition," the change in image becomes quite plain.
"Partition" is basically about the singer and her man spending some intimate quality time together
in the back of a limousine. And Beyoncé pulls very few punches in the explicit lyrics as well.
Let's just say this isn't the sort of song you'd want to play while your grandparents are around.
But it had already been abundantly clear for quite a while that Beyoncé wanted to present
a sexier side of herself when she went solo. The video for 2003's "Crazy in Love," for example,
unmistakably proved that she was immediately ready to move on from Destiny's Child.
2004's "Dip It Low" is almost certainly Christina Milian's most-known and best-loved song. It's
about a woman dancing for the object of her affection, to get him all hot and
bothered. Considering the suggestive nature of the lyrics, it was clear that Milian had
abandoned the wholesome image she'd cultivated years earlier. Maybe it was her rolling around
at the start of the music video that really sold it. Or maybe it was the seductive dance moves,
or perhaps the plunging leather bodysuit that she revealed after ripping off her dress.
One of Milian's earliest gigs was in the Disney Channel show Movie Surfers,
in which she played a host named Tina. Let's just say Milian's look and image at the time
were light years away from "Dip It Low," which makes perfect sense, as she was just a kid back
then. The song certainly boosted her career, as it made it to number five on the Billboard Hot
100 chart. But it may have been a little bit too much of a good thing. It's kind of inescapable for
her now, as people who recognize her in public inevitably come up and ask her to dip it low.
"But I'm watching one video, 'Dip It Low.'"
"Uh-huh?"
"And uh, and the police broke down the door! No, uh."
Jaimee Foxworth starred in the ABC sitcom Family Matters beginning in 1989 as the youngest Winslow
daughter, Judy. But by 1993 she was written off the show. She also appeared in one episode each
of the shows TV 101 and Amen, but then she left showbiz entirely, partly due to having anxiety
attacks. It wasn't that the acting jobs dried up for her; rather, her interest just faded away.
But then Foxworth's family fell on hard times, so to help out, she got into the adult entertainment
industry when she was only 19. As she admitted in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2006,
"It was, to me, the quickest money. I was so naïve, and I was drinking."
Foxworth eventually left the adult film world and also
overcame a substance abuse problem after having a son. But the backlash from her
career change was incredibly tough for her to get through. As she explained to Oprah Winfrey,
"I couldn't hold my head high. I couldn't walk around and say, 'My name is Jaimee Foxworth'
without someone saying, 'Ew' or 'We heard about you'. That's the most degrading part. I lost all
my confidence. I lost all my self-esteem. I lost friends. I lost some family members."
Dustin Diamond became famous as perhaps the geekiest geek in the history of TV
geeks. That was of course Samuel "Screech" Powers on Saved by the Bell. So he wasn't
exactly the kind of guy you'd expect to see get caught up in a sex scandal. But then in 2006,
he released a sex tape called Screeched: Saved by the Smell, which he both directed and starred in.
He ultimately regretted it, though. As he recalled on an episode of Oprah: Where Are They Now?,
"The sex tape is the thing that I'm most embarrassed about. My buddy was at my house
and the rumor I think that had been put on TV was that Paris Hilton had made $14 million off this
sex tape. And my buddy said, '$14 million? Holy smokes! Where's the Screech sex tape? You got to
be worth at least a million.' And I thought, yeah, maybe. And that's as simple as it was."
"In my stupidity, I thought, you know, I could totally fake this."
In 2014, Diamond admitted to The Daily Beast that he used a stunt double and a fake body
part in the sex tape, perhaps in the hopes of cooling some of the backlash. He also revealed
that the tape didn't rake in the millions of dollars that he was hoping for. Diamond never
returned to the glory of his younger days, as he died from cancer in 2021 at the age of 44.
Legal trouble, personal tragedies, and addiction all robbed Aaron Carter of his
old wholesome image. When he first broke on the scene, he was a clean-cut kid who
sang songs that were ideal for a tween audience, and he soon became a big star.
Some of the first signs of trouble happened in 2008 when Carter was arrested for marijuana
possession in Texas. Another arrest came in 2017 in Georgia for a DUI. Two years later,
his older brother Nick was granted a restraining order against him after
claiming that Aaron wanted to harm his wife and their unborn child.
And it wasn't just his behavior, as Aaron's appearance also shifted:
he began sporting face and neck tattoos, and he trimmed the long blonde locks that he used to
be known for. Sadly, he was never able to turn things around completely, as he died
at his home in Lancaster, California on November 5, 2022. He was only 34.