Ageless, Sparkly, and Completely Not Offensive
I fully planned not to write about the Super Bowl Halftime show. Partly because I didn’t think it was scandalous, and partly because I feel like the criticisms are anti-feminist and not worth the time. But after talking to some of my friends (and maybe spending slightly too much time on the monster that is Twitter), I decided that I had a couple thoughts that I wanted to share.
For those of you who missed it, the Super Bowl Halftime show this year featured an incredibly young-looking Jennifer Lopez and an ageless Shakira, both clad in sparkly (slightly scant) outfits, dancing, singing some of their greatest hits from the last…wow...20 years, and doing some truly remarkable acrobatics.
Political commentary was woven through the show, from the display of flags to the kids rising from cages to sing. Were their bodies on display as part of the show? Definitely. Were any of their NSFW parts showing? Nope.
And yet, from the fallout in the days after, you would think that they had been stripping off their clothes and gyrating naked on the stage. Commentaries abounded about how this was television that children might watch and how their bodies were too on display, leading to them being objectified. One man in Ohio even wants to sue, claiming that the show was the same as pornography. I’m sorry, pornography? I mean, I know that there is that famous quote about how you can’t define pornography, but you know it when you see it. But I have to say: this wasn’t it.
Some people claimed that the dancers were “half-naked”. Interesting that this wasn’t a problem when Adam Levine stripped off much of his clothing for the show in 2019. Sure, some people complained about the show, but none of them claimed it was pornography. Likewise, many who watch football regularly do not freak out about the teeny tiny outfits of the cheerleaders, despite the fact that they are showing far more skin than J. Lo did.
To her credit, Jennifer Lopez, when faced with the criticism, was quick to remind people that she and Shakira are both professional entertainers, mothers, and are “conscious of what we do.” But I find myself having to ask, why should she have to invoke her motherhood in order to make her body somehow less offensive? Why do we as a society continue to demand absolute perfection from female bodies, while simultaneously shaming them for showing what we deem to be too much?
One of the common themes running through the responses to the criticism was that the fact that both Shakira and Jennifer Lopez are women of color and this played a huge role in the collective “pearl clutching” that went on after the show. The idea that children need to be protected from the bodies of these strong, athletic Latina women, but can continuously be exposed to any number of white performers who gyrate, twist, turn, and romp about on stage wearing the same amount or less, is ludicrous. If you’d be fine with Taylor Swift doing it, consider why it really bothers you when J. Lo does it.
Lastly, but perhaps most profoundly, remember that many of the people impugning these ladies for destroying the fabric of morality in the country are the same ones who voted proudly for a man who advocated that he could grab women by the--well, you know--so please, miss me with your outrage here. The only thing that I found challenging about the halftime show? It made me realize that I should really, truly be doing more cardio.
What are your thoughts on the halftime show? Sound off in the comments to let us know!
-Amy