The Super Bowl Halftime Show Was Not ‘Too Sexy’
photo courtesy of @chalkandbrush Instagram
Boomers and white conservative parents around the entire continental U.S. lost their shit over Jennifer Lopez and Shakira’s Super Bowl halftime performance because it was ‘too sexy’ and not ‘kid-appropriate.’ Are we surprised? Honestly, no. Female artists get this criticism all the time. Last year’s performer Adam Levine didn’t receive backlash for taking off his shirt and wearing the tightest pants to ever exist, but when J-Lo shows her legs, it’s pornography. And yes, someone is actually suing Jennifer Lopez and Shakira for pornography.
Dave Daubenmire, a Christin activist from Ohio tweeted, "I think we ought to sue. Would that halftime show, would that have been rated PG? Were there any warnings that your 12-year-old son – whose hormones are just starting to operate – was there any warning that what he was going to see might cause him to get sexually excited?"
Thank you, Dave, for establishing this performance as a threat to the patriarchy. You realize teenage boys were not the only ones watching the Superbowl, right? Why do they take priority? I hate to break it to you, but these women did not perform for them. They performed for underrepresented communities. They performed to represent their culture and the strength and power that comes with being a woman. Maybe, your son just needs to calm the fuck down and do his research…
Shakira’s ‘sexy moves’ were a combination of Afro-Colombian dances, and yes, in those cultures they shake their hips. It’s not a sin. And her ‘random tough wagging’ was a mhururu, a celebratory sound common in Zimbabwe and other parts of Africa. The message to me wasn’t “Look at my body.” It was “Look at what my body can DO.” And damn these women could do a lot.
JLo’s ‘stripper routine,’ which was actually pole-dancing, showed off months of rigorous training she did for the movie, Hustlers, which by the way earned her several award nominations. There are even millions of pole dancing classes offered in gyms across the country. We don’t know about you, but we could never do that now let alone when we’re fifty years old. So, why is it too sexy? Who’s to say that pole dancing is allowed in gyms and not on stage? Men go to strip clubs every day, but women can’t take up pole dancing?
It is also important to note that if JLo and Shakira did not perform the way they did, it would’ve been a boring ass performance. Did these critics expect them to not dance and cover themselves from head-to-toe? It likely would have received even more criticism. One angry mom named Penny Nance tweeted that ‘Pepsi paid these women to dance to please men.” No, Penny, Pepsi paid them to dance. Period. Because they’re dancers. That’s their act. They would’ve pleased men no matter what dance they did. So no, they didn’t dance to please men.
Finally, Americans tend to deem things from other cultures as ‘too sexy.’ Franklin Graham commented on the performance saying, “I don’t expect the world to act like the church, but our country has had a sense of moral decency on prime time TV in order to protect children. We see that disappearing before our eyes. It was demonstrated in tonight’s @Pepsi #SuperBowl Halftime Show—w/millions of kids watching.”
We can name a lot of things that jeopardize our country’s moral decency, and Latinx culture is not one of them. If you had a problem with the Super Bowl halftime show, we suggest you take 63-year-old Janet Rufty’s advice:
https://twitter.com/janssome/status/1224331409403400195
screenshot courtney of abby weiss