Call me Karen, I really don’t care, but what I just sat through during the halftime show at the 2020 Super Bowl should never happen again. I want to speak to all the supervisors who let this happen.
JLo empowering women everywhere at the #SuperBowl
Men, Do Not Look or you will be accused of being a rapist. pic.twitter.com/8ewIbTFR2w
— Denise McAllister (@McAllisterDen) February 3, 2020
The FCC still has rules about decency on network television between certain hours when children are watching. It is well established that children are watching during the Super Bowl. I had to send mine out of the room as soon as Jennifer Lopez took the stage in what looked like a two-sided thong and buttless chaps. The camerawork was outrageously gross, zooming in on Lopez’s barely covered crotch, so close that the viewer could see some sort of silver maxi pad sticking out from either side of her way-too-small fraud of a garment. If that thing wasn’t riding up between her front-hole lips, then my 6o-inch HDTV television was lying to me, and HD never lies. If you don’t believe me, watch Joe Biden on one. You can count his hair plugs.
The last time a Super Bowl halftime show was this gross it cost CBS $550,000 for broadcasting Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s ridiculous “wardrobe malfunction” stunt. In my opinion, this is just as bad. As the video above shows, at one point Lopez bends over and exposes her entire backside to the camera. The only thing separating her anus from the camera is a pair of sheer stockings and a black thong. This is not okay. What the hell is wrong with the NFL? I thought they were going to go more “family-friendly” after the Jackson-Timberlake fiasco? Also, the cameramen were focused on JLo’s crotch for most of the performance. I can’t in good conscience show more here than that clip above. If you want to see it go find it. But it’s indecent and totally inappropriate for the Super Bowl halftime show.
Shakira was not as offensive, although the cameramen also could not stay away from her crotch. But at least she was wearing an imitation of a skirt and she wasn’t on a stripper pole. Yep. JLo did a striptease pole dance while barely-dressed backup dancers simulated an orgy underneath her. It was disgusting.
What is the message here for young women exactly? You are not a sexual object and can demand men be fired for looking at you or complimenting you in the #MeToo era. You can also dress up like a whore and gyrate around on stage half-naked for the pleasure of men, but if they take pleasure in it, you can accuse them of being harassers. Get it?
All I know is that no parent ever looked at their little girl and thought, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she grows up to prance around on stage in a thong, letting cameramen get close-up shots of her nether regions?”
Here’s what the FCC decided in 2004 when the oversexualized performance of Janet Jackson outraged people.
The Commission examined all three factors in the NAL and determined that, in context and on balance, the halftime show is patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium. The Commission determined that the broadcast of partial nudity in this instance was explicit and graphic and appeared to pander to, titillate and shock the viewing audience. Therefore, the Commission determined that the material was patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, even though the nudity was brief.
They should get out their manuals and start reviewing this performance. If you want to file a complaint and make a government agency actually do its job, go here. The sad part is that anyone paying attention to our “contemporary community standards” since 2004 knows they couldn’t be much lower. There is little hope that anyone agrees with me except people who have already gone off-grid and destroyed their televisions with baseball bats—and they have no idea this even happened. Does anyone have room on their survival compound for one more?
Megan Fox is the author of “Believe Evidence; The Death of Due Process from Salome to #MeToo,” and host of The Fringe podcast. Follow on Twitter @MeganFoxWriter
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