During this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez took the stage for a performance that was supposed to be about celebrating their Latino heritage and empowering women. That’s all fine, but the show was still completely inappropriate for children and the Super Bowl.
When J-Lo shimmies down a stripper pole in Hustlers, she’s doing so in an R-rated film. In theory, no one under age 17 sees it. That isn’t so when she does it at the Super Bowl.
Worse than Shakira’s and J-Lo’s oversexualized performance, however, was the message it sent to young viewers. Millions of families watch the Super Bowl each year, and for the finale, J-Lo even brought her 11-year-old daughter on stage with her for a performance of Let’s Get Loud. By that point, a convenient outfit change had made her look a bit more appropriate for sharing the stage with children.
Yeah — but what about everyone else’s children?
Gratuitous sexuality is nothing new for the Super Bowl. This year’s performance was nothing compared with Janet Jackson’s unfortunate moment in 2004. That said, it was particularly disappointing to see grinding on other performers and dancing on a stripper pole become just another form of female expression, and one that preceded a children’s ensemble joining the stage, no less.
Yes, children have probably seen far worse than Shakira’s and J-Lo’s performance on social media. But in a day and age when child sexual abuse is ravaging public schools, the Catholic Church, Hollywood, and every institution in between, that’s no reason to normalize hypersexualization of content aimed at children.
It’s even worse that this is being passed off as a form of mainstream entertainment that promotes female empowerment. It is the opposite of feminism to teach young girls to look up to icons who act like strippers. That’s not empowerment. It’s self-objectification.
