Nickelodeon allegedly ignored complaints about oversexualized costumes, scenes

Nickelodeon

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The release of iCarly star Jennette McCurdy's scathing memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, has sparked serious conversations about writer and creator Dan Schneider’s inappropriate behaviour.

In a 2018 joint statement, Nickelodeon and Dan Schneider announced they would be parting ways, prompting people to speculate the reasons why.

As New York Times reports, before their separation, “ViacomCBS, the parent company of Nickelodeon, had investigated Schneider and found that, alongside the many co-workers who praised his attention to detail and work ethic, many people he worked with viewed him as verbally abusive.”

They also conducted interviews with employees and allegedly discovered there is “no evidence of sexual misconduct by Schneider.”

Despite having no concrete evidence to support these allegations against Schneider, McCurdy’s memoir appears to have inspired other former Nickelodeon stars to speak out against him.

According to Daily Mail, Schneider had a history of “forcing the young actors into sexualized scenes.”

Former Zoey 101 star, Alexa Nikolas, recently promoted her ‘Eat Predators’ tour on Twitter, where she and 30 other protesters, according to Rolling Stone, gathered outside of Nickelodeon Studios in Burbank, California, to protest the “enabling of abuse from executives at the network,” specifically calling out Dan Schneider.

This Thursday 💋 pic.twitter.com/dwPTPMa1N3

— Alexa Nikolas (@alexanikolas__) August 23, 2022

As Daily Mail writes, Victorious actress, Daniella Monet, also claims that a “scene that she was uncomfortable with was left in the final cut of an episode despite her objections to the network.”

Monet does not appear to single Schneider out specifically, but rather places blame on the entire network for allowing adolescents to be oversexualized on television.

Some specific examples of oversexualized scenes include one where Victorious star, Ariana Grande, puts her big toe in her mouth. Another example is a scene where she is seen “with her eyes closed, moaning and squeezing a potato in both hands, begging it to ‘give up the juice’,” Insider reports.

ariana grande as cat valentine being thirsty and desperate, squeezing a potato and moaning uhh come on, give up the juice! pic.twitter.com/dz4HImpgfH

— The Memes Archive (@TheMemesArchive) February 7, 2020

Additionally, in a separate Insider report, Monet describes an uncomfortable scene where she was forced to apply lip gloss while eating a pickle.

Insider also references yet another inappropriate scene where “goo [with] roughly the consistency of an egg white, was being squirted repeatedly on the teen actor Jaime Lynn Spears' face", which one of her male castmates compared to a “c** shot."

There was a scene Daniella Monet found too sexual in Victorious and she ended up calling up the heads of the network at Nickelodeon.

My guess it was this scene from The Wood where Trina and Robbie get hit with white lotion. Read as an adult inneudo.

The network did nothing. pic.twitter.com/5B3kWNStV1

— Obiscure Nick (@ObiscureNick) August 30, 2022

Despite actresses, writers, and crew members expressing their discomfort at some of the revealing costume choices, skimpy bathing suits, and sexually-driven scenes, the former president of content and production at Nickelodeon, Russel Hicks, claims that “every single thing that Dan ever did on any of his shows was carefully scrutinized and approved," adding that "the Standards and Practices division read all of the scripts for Schneider's shows and watched every episode.”