Like most Americans, I grew up watching the Super Bowl and its halftime show, which was greater to me than the game itself. After all, the Super Bowl halftime show is one of America’s most-watched events, attracting the world’s top musical acts and serving as the quintessential American cultural union of sports, sexist double standards and pop culture.
While researching this year’s performance, I was fully expecting to hear about the controversies surrounding the popular artists, hip hop and the genre finally entering the national stage. In reality, however, I felt I heard more references to Janet Jackson’s infamous 2004 wardrobe malfunction than to the future show. You would think that after 17 years people would have moved on from the incident.
This incessant shaming gets deemed appropriate under the pretense of making the Super Bowl more “family-friendly”. However, we can easily conclude that this is not the real reason; it is just America’s endemic sexism. In the Janet Jackson saga, we only see the hate directed towards her. Justin Timberlake, the man who pulled her corset off, got away with “Nipplegate” unscathed. Whereas Jackson’s career was wrecked by it.
You would be extremely mistaken if you think these sexist controversies are a thing of the past. In 2020, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira’s show at Super Bowl 54in Miami was met with much sexist criticism. Americans, like Gil Smart from USA Today, stated in a February 2020 article that the show “should have come with a parental warning” and that “it looked a lot like softcore porn”. However, it was unusual to hear the same amount of shame and contempt during Adam Levine’s topless halftime performance in 2019. The double standard is so obvious because female performers face the worst sorts of criticism and ridicule publicly, but male artists can get away with practically anything, with their “hate” coming from a few funny memes.
The hypocrisy surrounding these Super Bowl halftime shows is merely a symptom of a much bigger problem in America. Despite the fact that we live in a culture that benefits from sexualizing women, our society is never shy about condemning women for not “covering up”. Women are subjected to far higher and more unjust standards than men. When ladies express themselves and their sexuality in art, they are nearly invariably treated with the type of shock, ridicule and disgust that is glaringly absent in men’s criticisms.
If people were truly concerned about keeping the Superbowl “family-friendly”, they could easily find a better method to accomplish it than through destroying these women’s careers and/or degrading their value. Hate and slut shaming will not help achieve anything. If people wanted to see a difference, they would be better off investing their time engaging in the types of cultural criticisms and debates that are essential for actual change.