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We’re All Trixie Vixen, Now!
Female “empowerment” has gone the way of any flashy trend: someone takes it too far, it loses any impact it had, and it becomes a parody of itself landing at the butt-end of a Babylon Bee joke or “South Park” episode. Congratulations, Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show, you were the venue to finally break the glass ceiling – liberating countless female “adult entertainers” and sending them to the high holy ranks of empowered women. Move over Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Trixie Vixen is the new (very glittery) face of women’s rights!
I’ve long given up on the entertainment industry exercising any type of self-censorship in the interest of good taste or what is appropriate for public consumption. I was a kid once (at least as evidenced in family photos) and, although I never took much interest in them, the magazines aimed at teens contained all sorts of information that would make any adult blush.
If you think there is any possibility the current environment still contains relatively minor risqué topics, the April 26 issue of Teen Vogue ran an article titled “Why Sex Work Is Real Work.” I feel empowered just by reading that headline. The entertainment industry is not made up of a bunch of dummies; they know a certain level of undress and controversy translates into viewers and dollars. Remember those suggestive “Go Daddy” commercials (they debuted during Super Bowl XXXIX)? The originals created enough buzz that most people didn’t know exactly what Go Daddy was but they sure knew the commercials. And how about the Clairol Herbal Essence advertising campaign – not exactly “Where’s the beef?”
In the Entertainment-News Media-Politics echo chamber/hot-air tunnel, the Shakira and J-Lo show from this year’s Super Bowl is the stuff of dreams. The artists get the immediate spotlight and publicity while the NFL receives a lot of advertising dollars. News media pads their shows with puff-piece interviews with the stars and mutual pats on the back. The networks showcase how groundbreaking it is to have two strong females (Latinas, no less!) headlining an enormous event. Surely such great talents are role models for millions of girls around the globe. This is the definition of female empowerment!
Then post-performance disapproval by conservative prudes (natch) only lends fuel to the fire for progressive politicians and pundits. There must be racism or misogyny behind any criticism, and Trump must be to blame somewhere in there. Both women chose to perform something resembling a million-dollar burlesque show rather than showcasing their true singing and dancing talents. It reveals that those in charge think the Neanderthal American audience finds more value in an appeal to the basest appetite instead of trusting that we are smart enough to appreciate the actual singing and dancing (not the pole-type) talents of these women.
It takes an amazing amount of double-think and lack of self-awareness to insist a woman’s value lies only in her being a sexual object, all the while trotting out and celebrating – as role models – a show where the two women stars are highlighted as sexual objects. I thought it was hilarious that Shakira and Jennifer Lopez were a square-inch of fabric away from being blurred by the network while the male lead performer wore a full dress suit, hat, and overcoat. In my experience, it’s usually us women who are overdressed. Does it take male “empowerment” to reveal some abs? Ladies watch the Super Bowl, too, and if we’re talking about equality…
The Super Bowl LIV halftime show solidified gratuitous displays of sexuality and objectification of women as “empowerment.” That mentality is here to stay, especially if it continues to draw money for the entertainment industry and there exists a progressive media and news culture pushing a narrative that modesty is an oppressive construct of the patriarchy. The government is not going to be much help in this realm, either. It doesn’t do censorship well. Other than the already established Federal Communications Commission, do we really want the Feds dictating what speech should absolutely be acceptable? That’s a dangerous tightrope to walk. Last week, the FCC modernized the broadcaster notification rules for cable and satellite TV providers in order to reduce paper waste. I’d rather that be the big news than what speech or messages are deemed allowable any given day. And isn’t the goal of conservatives less government, not more?
So it leaves us as the custodians of our kids’ futures. We can feed them a steady diet of contradicting messages: women are not to be viewed merely as sexual objects on one hand, while pointing to celebrities who present themselves as precisely that as role models for female empowerment on the other. Or we can guide them through an overly sexualized pop-culture in which adult videos and images are available at their fingertips, teaching and modeling for them that an intellectually curious mind is true empowerment. An appreciation for selflessness, compassion, courage, honesty, virtue, and pursuit of the truth – the things one might not necessarily find in the nearest gentleman’s club or the pages of Cosmo, but around the kitchen table or the pages of a classic novel.
Published in General
Another great post. Thank you!
I feel relieved that I’ve reached retirement age and just hope I never have to put it to the test.
Par for the course. This is the same group of people who lecture us about our lifestyles, or lightbulbs, and the fact that we have one home and a car to take us where we need to go, while they buzz all over the world in their private jets, visiting their private islands and their mansions and estates in several different countries. Self-awareness isn’t exactly their middle name.
Amen, and even so.
The goal of the Super Bowl halftime show pretty much for the past two decades has been to get people to not talk about the game after the game, and even the NFL is in on this, because it helps draw non-football fans in, and at the same time still manages to give the event some buzz if the game’s a stinker (which for the first 30 or so years of the Super Bowl happened more often than not).
The halftime shows are designed specifically to go right up to the line, or even stick a toe (or a naked butt) a little across it, so it becomes its own story aside from the Chiefs and 49ers. The only time they pull back is when they overshoot the line and take the performance so far it ends up sparking widespread condemnation. They they lay low for a year or two with the show’s visuals before ramping it up again.
Quite a number of church groups have super bowl parties as a form of outreach to get together with neighbors in a non-threatening environment. Perhaps its more threatening than they think and in a different way.
Eh she’s Colombian Lebanese. A lot of her performance are gestures and dances from both cultures. It’s when JLo came out and they performed together that things really really went off the deep end.
I was watching the game with our youngest, soon to be 13yr old boy – he was pretty embarrassed. We talked about it, I told him I was embarrassed too – we got some ice cream and waited for the half-time show to end. It was one of too many instances of being almost forced into having conversations with my kids that I never anticipated having. I really resent getting so little help from the popular culture at large, – yes, I get that there are ‘filters’ and ‘parental settings’ but for the Super bowl Half-Time Show?
I hope that a future contestant in the Miss America Scholarship Pagent performs a pole dance for the talent portion of the pagent. It would likely be wholly condemned as not who Miss America represents – since they have already eliminated the swimsuit and evening gown portions of the contest because…objectification…or something. I believe this year’s winner did science experiments in smart glasses and a lab coat if I am remembering that right. The cognitive dissonance would be fun to watch!
-DP
I don’t really see it as “objectification” of women. These females are fully in control of what they want to present to the public. There’s no male authority telling them they have to wiggle their proverbial fannies more for the crowd.
What I see is females reveling in their power over men. They only have one weapon left in their arsenal ( well it’s the same one women have always used) sex. But nowadays the competition is really fierce. To outdo the others you have to be even more brazen and crude.
I seriously doubt many men are sexually attracted to this kind of spectacle. It’s also quite odd because, as much as we know the dancing boys are in reality quite gay, we know these vixens are not in the least interested in having anything to do with us regular guys at home. So it becomes a display that, on the surface, has all the trappings of some sexual rite, but after the tiniest reflection, we see it for what it is, a desperate appeal for attention.
If a Milanese puntana in leather thigh-highs provided this kind of overt display, she’d probably have trouble getting business. What is she compensating for?
Here’s what I find interesting: on the one hand, we have this halftime show, basically a cross between porn (whether soft-core or otherwise I will leave to the connoisseurs of that are form) and an ancient fertility ritual conducted by one of the less-advanced societies.
On the other hand, we have the professor who got in serious professional trouble for making a lame old joke in an elevator (‘ladies lingerie, please’) and a rocket scientist who was widely denounced for wearing a shirt portraying spacewomen who were not wearing Victorian apparel (but were a lot more dressed than what appeared in the halftime show)
So what I wonder is: Are the people who thought the halftime show was just fine, even ’empowering’, the *same* people who are quick with denunciations in such cases as that of the elevator and the shirt? Or are they non-overlapping sets?
I suspect, though without any data, that there is considerable overlap.
Good post, Jenna.
I’m going to push back a bit on this part:
My observation is that it seemed to work in the 1950s and 1960s. I’m old enough to remember that your argument is precisely the one that caused the prior rules to be eliminated, with the results that you rightfully lament.
In order to enforce standards, you need to have standards and you need to enforce them. The alternative is chaos. Of course, there will be difficult cases, close to any line that we care to establish. Abandoning the idea of holding a line is not a solution, either.
I’ve not watched a Super Bowl since 1986, and even that one was only because at the time, my father ruled the TV and I was bored. In the many years since that one, I have noticed a major continuing pattern: there is more sturm and drang over the commercials and how great / fantastic / awful / vulgar / uplifting / obscene / boring / weird the halftime show than over the game itself. Here we are two days after the game and the conversation is still about that show.
So my question is this: what does that say about this game, or the NFL in general? Forget the spectacle of the show for a moment – it’s just a passing thing, and instead take a look at the reasons for the spectacle. Why does this show matter so dang much? Why does this annual TV hysteria matter so much? And why in heck is anyone ever surprised that there is so much drama about it? It seems to me that the drama is entirely expected and somehow mandated by the circumstances. It’s Oscar Wilde – better to be talked about than not talked about. Well, from their perspective they’ve succeeded.
If she was trying an Arab ululation, she failed. That’s not how it’s done, and that’s why it’s kinda weird.
I was taken aback when immediately following the pole dancing strip show we had girl scouts appear on the field to celebrate women in STEM and the like. They really don’t even see the conflict in messages? It felt to me that the gyrations and bump and grind were intended as a message to those very girls, that to be a real woman you have to be a tech nerd AND a sex goddess.
The superbowl is about the game for all the football fans out there.
But with any broadcast that pulls the kind of numbers this one does ( I read a 97 share? OMG, that is barely comprehensible. ) you are trying to be all things to all people. So the halftime show is not about football on any level, it is spectacle to please those who are not football fans. ( The fans are in the bathroom or getting wings!)
The commercial time sells for >$ 10,000,000 a minute. So that naturally means that the advertisements are the best and newest the advertisers can offer. For many, that becomes the point of the show, a show within the show.
So sure, there are distractions and attractions far outside the football game, but make no mistake, if the game didn’t matter to anyone, the rest would be moot. It’s about the championship.
Shakira’s outfits and routine were almost wholly unobjectionable that way.
It seems reasonable to assume then that most people watching the entire broadcast are not even football fans at all.
The Girl Scouts have done gone weird and woke in the last few decades. At lot of my friends who have daughters were therefore thrilled when the Boy Scouts started allowing female troops because those Scouts actually still have core ethics and do fun stuff, while avoiding politics.
Omg
Well the Uber Feminists are always proclaiming we can have it all…
Jenna, I don’t understand this particular part of your post.
I think that the lack of self-awareness lies in the feminist insistence that “men” wrongfully devalue women by considering them to be mere sexual objects, juxtaposed with adulation of celebrity women who portray themselves as sexual objects. Perhaps this is what you meant.
Just be glad we don’t have a Clinton in the White House like we did when my kids were in junior high and grammar school.
Yeah given the howl after, I’m pretty sure that’s what she’s going for. I’m okay with Shakira as a performer(indifferent to her actual music, but I think she has stage charisma) so I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.
If you look at all the parts of the entire performance together (even omitting the overt sexuality), there’s just too much going on. It looks like the younger generation’s ADHD on display. Musicians always do medleys at these shows, but I could barely process one artist to the next. The combination of Latin music, African Arabic music, JLo’s club music, JLo’s stripper routine, random rappers, and staging kids to sing for some stupid political message just overloads my brain.
I’m just gonna go rewatch the Prince’s half time show.
It’s a having it both ways mindset, in that the feminists are fine with celebrities who have made their name in part due to their sexuality and showing that off in public as part of a sexually-themed message, but then getting angry when the men watching the performance take it as being sexually themed. Real-world equivalent would be a woman who walks around in ultra-tight pants and/or with her shirt unbuttoned to allow the cleavage to flow getting angry at men looking at her as a sex object.
There’s a lack of consistency in the messaging. But the people promoting this see no problem with the inconsistency, because they want to be in the power position on both sides of the equation.
Bottom line, it is empowering and to be celebrated when a woman overtly displays sexuality and knows how to use it to get what she wants.
Also, it is disgusting male patriarchy for a man to respond to or even mention overtly sexual acts, and if, gaya forbid, he interprets that overt sexual display as an invitation to initiate or even suggest sexual acts, he should be banned from earth, forever, no reprieve.
It’s about equality, after all!
Is it even possible to go back to a halftime show centered around a rock band? I think not.
Halftime Show Reduces Risk Of Wardrobe Malfunction By Eliminating Most Of Wardrobe
Am I just in mommy-brain fog, or is this sentence missing a negation somewhere?
Yes I agree with that- and also can it be true that celebrity adulation self-perpetuates itself by placing more value in the overtly sexual than the raw talent of the performer? Maybe it has more to do with a youth-centered society. I appreciate your thoughts!
It’s only been like 10 years since the likes of Springsteen & The E Street Band and The Who did the halftime shows. It’s just our culture has shifted so much in that time.
Thank for your kind words! And even if they weren’t, constructive criticism and conversation is always welcome. :-)