Jenny McCarthy
The Playmate who snort-laughed at the glamour game. As MTV's Singled Out co-host she buried the pin-up script under googly faces and gross-out physical comedy — and proved a bombshell could be the funniest person in the room.
Jenny McCarthy was born November 1, 1972, in Evergreen Park, Illinois, a south suburb of Chicago. She became Playboy's Playmate of the Month in October 1993 and was named 1994 Playmate of the Year — but she had no interest in simply being looked at.
In 1995, MTV tapped her to co-host Singled Out, the channel's chaotic dating show, and she spent the next two years flipping the pin-up script entirely. Instead of glamorous poise she delivered googly faces, snorting laughs, and physical comedy so deliberately gross it became an anti-glamour statement — the era's new idea of what a bombshell could be. By 1997 she'd parlayed that charisma into her own MTV sketch show (The Jenny McCarthy Show) and an NBC sitcom, Jenny (1997–98); both were short-lived, but the point was made. Meanwhile her deliberately taboo Candie's shoe ads — including one posing on a toilet seat — became a late-90s magazine staple.
She appeared in BASEketball (1998) with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Diamonds (1999), and Scream 3 (2000). Her real legacy was the precedent: a Playmate could be irreverent, self-mocking, and in control of her own image, and comedy-first charm could beat glamour at its own game.
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Singled Out
MTV's gloriously unfiltered dating game: a 50-person dating pool eliminated in real time by one picker who couldn't even see them. Chris Hardwick steered the chaos while Jenny McCarthy — and later Carmen Electra — egged everyone on. It was peak mid-90s MTV: loud, hormonal, zero filter.
Carmen Electra
The Prince protégée who became the late-90s everywhere-woman: Playboy covers, Baywatch's Lani McKenzie, MTV's Singled Out, and a Las Vegas wedding to Dennis Rodman that hit annulment papers nine days later. Then the 2000s spoof-movie wave made her its favorite good sport.
Pamela Anderson
Discovered on a stadium jumbotron in a beer T-shirt, she became the decade's defining pin-up via a red swimsuit and a slow-motion jog. Baywatch's C.J. Parker was less a character than a cultural symbol — and no one on Earth was more 90s-famous.
Tom Green
A Canadian comedian and prankster whose MTV show turned everyday chaos into absurdist performance art. Tom Green built a cult following by harassing his own parents on camera, hitting No. 1 on TRL with a song about putting his bum on things, and turning a testicular cancer diagnosis into a shockingly honest TV special. He was unhinged before unhinged was a brand.