It’s 1966, and Captain Kirk is getting tossed around some alien planet, his Starfleet uniform ripped open to reveal a perfectly bare, sweat-covered chest. Nobody at Standards and Practices seems to care. Over on another NBC show, however, Barbara Eden is playing a 2,000-year-old genie whose entire job involves granting wishes, and apparently the sight of her belly button is where television morality suddenly hits the brakes.
Welcome to the wonderfully strange world of 1960s television censorship, where a woman’s navel could apparently pose a greater threat to American values than Captain Kirk running around half-dressed. American television really did have a problem with exposed female navels, and I Dream of Jeannie became one of the best-known examples. Barbara Eden has recalled that Standards and Practices objected to showing her navel, creating one of those wonderfully bizarre television double standards that becomes funnier the more you think about it. Larry Hagman could wander around I Dream of Jeannie in swim trunks, and William Shatner could lose his shirt on Star Trek, but heaven forbid Barbara Eden’s costume expose an inch of stomach. Male skin was apparently wholesome. Female skin was a national emergency.
The rule created some pretty ridiculous production gymnastics on I Dream of Jeannie. Barbara Eden’s famous pink genie costume required some creative wardrobe engineering, with her harem pants designed to keep her navel covered. If the costume shifted during a scene, television magic took over. A camera angle could change, a close-up could suddenly become very important, or a strategically placed prop could save the day. Anything was preferable to accidentally allowing Barbara Eden’s belly button to make its network television debut.
The High-Waisted Solution
Barbara Eden’s costume is a perfect example of how censorship could turn something completely ordinary into a production problem. The audience was supposed to believe that Jeannie was a glamorous, magical woman from another world, but behind the scenes somebody also had to make sure her costume was sitting at precisely the right height. It is hard not to picture a wardrobe person watching a rehearsal and thinking, “Everything looks great, but we have a belly button situation.”
The whole thing becomes even stranger when you remember what was happening elsewhere on television. Men could appear shirtless without causing the same level of concern, while a woman showing a small section of her stomach could require wardrobe adjustments, camera tricks and careful staging. Television was advancing rapidly, but apparently the human navel remained one frontier nobody was ready to tackle.
Welcome to Hawaii, Just Don’t Show Jeannie’s Belly Button
The double standard became even more amusing when I Dream of Jeannie went to Hawaii. There were beaches, bikinis, sunshine and plenty of people walking around with their stomachs exposed. Other women could appear with their belly buttons showing, while Barbara Eden still had to keep hers covered because of the standards surrounding her character and costume.
The contrast was hard to miss. The beach was apparently fine. Bikini-clad extras were fine. The general concept of a human stomach was fine. But Jeannie’s belly button was where the line had to be drawn. The exact reasoning behind those decisions is less clear than the famous story makes it sound, but the result was still one of the strangest examples of television censorship from the era.
Star Trek Had Its Own Belly Button Problems
Over on Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry ran into similar problems. The famous Mirror Universe uniforms, with their exposed midriffs, created an issue because the actresses’ navels could not be visible. The production had to find ways to keep them covered, including body tape to make sure costumes stayed where they were supposed to stay.
The same problem could arise when Star Trek featured dancers or performers in costumes that exposed the stomach. Production crews used various tricks and costume pieces to keep those troublesome belly buttons out of sight. Think about that for a second. This was Star Trek, a show about traveling faster than light, encountering alien civilizations and questioning the nature of humanity. But somebody at NBC was worried about a belly button.
And here is where things get even stranger. Men actually produce more belly button lint than women. Australian scientist Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki conducted a large online survey that included 4,799 participants, and about 83 percent of men and 43 percent of women reported producing navel lint. Later scientific research examined how body hair and friction from clothing help move loose textile fibers toward the navel. In other words, abdominal hair can act like a microscopic conveyor belt, collecting loose fibers and sending them toward their final destination.
The result is that familiar blue-grey collection of clothing fibers, along with things such as dead skin, dust and sweat. So, by that logic, you might assume women’s belly buttons would be cleaner. Of course, the research only tells us that women reported producing less navel lint. It does not prove that their belly buttons are actually cleaner, but it does make the old television obsession seem even more ridiculous.
While television executives were worrying about the female navel corrupting America, millions of men were presumably sitting at home with their shirts tucked in, unknowingly accumulating tiny collections of textile fibers in their own belly buttons. And somehow, that seems like a much bigger television problem.
Gene Roddenberry Gets His Revenge
Gene Roddenberry eventually found a way to turn the whole thing into a joke. In 1973, while working on his television pilot Genesis II, Roddenberry cast Mariette Hartley, who had appeared on Star Trek and had experienced the network’s navel-covering rules. Instead of simply accepting the absurdity of the situation, Roddenberry decided to have a little fun with it.
His answer was wonderfully ridiculous. He created a character for Hartley who had two belly buttons. At that point, you almost have to admire the man. Roddenberry took an absurdly specific censorship concern and turned it into a joke by giving the character more belly buttons than the censors had apparently planned for.
That is what makes the history of old network censorship so entertaining. These people were making science fiction about the future while simultaneously having serious meetings about whether America could handle seeing Barbara Eden’s belly button. Television was preparing audiences for alien worlds, transporter technology and civilizations millions of light-years away, but apparently the human navel was still one frontier nobody was quite ready to explore.
And somehow, we survived.
Recommended Reading
More from Sandbox World
- Prop Genie Bottle From “I Dream of Jeannie” on Display at Smithsonian — A natural companion piece about I Dream of Jeannie, Barbara Eden and the show’s place in television history.
- Did Strange New Worlds Just Rewrite the Entire History of Star Trek? — A deeper look at Star Trek history and the way the franchise continues to play with its own past.
- Star Trek Turns 60: Was This the Anniversary Fans Were Waiting For? — Tony’s look at the original series, its 60th anniversary and the continuing appeal of Star Trek.
- When TV Shows Made the Jump to the Big Screen — A broader look at television history and the strange ways classic TV properties leaped to Hollywood.
Further Reading
- How a Bottle Served as a Living Room—and a Prison—for a 2,000-Year-Old Genie — Smithsonian Magazine — A useful historical look at I Dream of Jeannie, including Barbara Eden’s recollections of the show’s Standards and Practices battles.
- Mariette Hartley Cherishes “All Our Yesterdays” — StarTrek.com — Hartley discusses the Star Trek navel controversy and the famous Genesis II two-belly-button story.
- Modeling the Production of Belly Button Lint — Scientific Reports — The scientific research examining how clothing fibers and abdominal hair contribute to navel lint, including the Kruszelnicki survey.
- The Nature of Navel Fluff — PubMed — Research into what belly-button lint contains and how abdominal hair helps collect it.