There are zero words for what I saw in this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. The fact that our society tolerates this sort of thing is absolutely appalling. My family, coworkers, and minister tell me to move on, but still I wake up every night in a cold sweat with the image of Shakira’s sequin-clad thighs burned into my consciousness.
Is this the message we want to send to our kids? That it’s okay to be a grown-ass woman exercising your bodily autonomy in a routine with culturally representative dancing and revelry?
This sideshow should have come with a warning label that it was an affront to families, God, and our great nation. All of that booty shaking and foot stomping in a host city that’s seventy percent Hispanic isn’t how we dance in AMERICA.
And just what was J-Lo thinking by wrapping herself up in a furry, distorted Texas flag? How DARE she disrespect the Lone Star State like that.
And don’t even get me started on the stripper pole. Yes, I mean “stripper pole” even though there was no stripping and I saw something like it in Cirque du Soleil. (That was different – the people on the pole were skinny white men in a circus, therefore acrobats.) But THIS… this was an attractive Latina, so it was nothing short of softcore PORN. All of the sexual exploitation of women in charge of their artistic decisions made me long for a pure, family-friendly form of entertainment. Like a performance by some nice, all-American NFL cheerleaders.
And there were CHILDREN onstage. In CAGES. Front and CENTER. Being held hostage and forced to participate in this “creative” spectacle. Is there anything worse?
Why do we even need a halftime show anyway? If you ask me, the whole thing is a distraction from the reason we all gather round our televisions: to watch our boys in uniform play their hearts out, bring pride to their hometowns, and inflict bone-crushing violence and lifelong brain injury.
It’s time we brought REAL music back to the Super Bowl stage. Give us red-blooded, American rock and roll, like Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, or Coldplay. No need for filthy pelvis gyration, hip-shaking, or vagina-wagging. Today’s acts could learn a lot from the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. His crotch-slide into a camera at Super Bowl XLIII was some star-spangled performance art.
The last time the Chiefs won a championships was fifty years ago, when the halftime performer was the great Carol Channing. If we’re going to continue to allow women to perform on the world’s biggest stage for eight minutes, they should dress like Ms. Channing: in a high-necked muumuu that obscures any womanly shape between the chin and the toes. I’ve been told that these female “performers” need “non-restrictive” clothing so they can “move freely.” First of all, dancing is the devil’s sport. But if harlots must lead our sons down a path of temptation, then make them wear those old-timey Victorian swimsuits with bloomers. Those give plenty of freedom of movement from the knees down.
And before you accuse me of being sexist, I have no problem with women performing at the Super Bowl. I quite enjoyed the performances of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and younger Madonna. There’s a huge difference between their shows and this trash; I just can’t put my finger on what it is.
