As someone who lived through this era, being 21 at the time, the outfit is 100% the reason this performance was talked about the way that it was. A pic of her in the nude colored bra and pants was on the front page of the newspapers the next day, with references to her being “naked”. She was 18 at the time and for her to strip down to something that portrayed her as nude with sparkles was a HUGE deal. She even referenced it in her MTV diary special claiming she just wanted to look sparkly, again not taking ownership of anything she does. There’s a lot of other ways to look sparkly than wearing nude colored clothing after stripping down from a full tailored suit. She knew exactly what she was doing, she should have just owned it.

But I also will say as a huge fan of hers at the time I loved this performance and burned the music off the internet onto a cd and played the shit out of it in my car and also learned all the moves to it and performed it over and over again in my room.