Originally published 1/6/20
I watched Jennifer Lopez's Super Bowl half-time performance unfold with awe as I compared her dancing to my plate of ribs. We're the same age, I thought. And she's hanging from a pole and singing and I'm eating ribs. At least I was sitting on the floor. From which I later had difficulty getting up. Originally a Fly Girl dancer on "In Living Color" (1991), JLo danced every moment of the 14-minute show, each movement choreographed, energetic and fierce. Her hair stayed perfectly curled through every flip and toss, not one bit affected by the Miami humidity. She used some of her leftover skills from her latest movie, "Hustlers," (a true story about a group of entrepreneurial strippers Robin-Hooding stockbrokers in the late-2000s) by suspending herself horizontally on a pole. She paid homage to America, where she was born, and Puerto Rico, the homeland of her parents, when she donned a furry invertable flag from both countries. As a proud Mama, she sang a duet with her daughter, "Born in the U.S.A.," at a time when birthright has become a political imperative. Yes, she grabbed her crotch. She wore not one, but two body suits, leaving not much to the imagination. We saw her backside, and much of it, more than once, as well as her front side, in classic Chicago-land burlesque chair-dancing style, without the spindles to hide anything. Her hands wandered, her lips pursed and her eyelids drooped, all in what my dad would have called "come hither" fashion.
One of her many crotch grabs that offended so many.
In usual contrast, the male rappers that appeared alongside were covered, literally, head to toe in baggy, over-sized clothing. The show also had a decidedly Latin flair, appropriate for the ethnicity of the dancers and the city in which they performed. The hip shaking and sensual dancing that offends the very proper nature of most Anglo Saxon whites actually has roots in the most respected ballrooms - salsa, merengue, cha-cha-cha and the rumba. Watch closely, and you'll notice that among the professional ballroom dancers, the women there don't wear many clothes, either, while the men are fully dressed.
Julianne Hough in a respectable samba costume on DWTS, left.
There has been much reaction to JLo's Super Bowl half time performance, which was alongside 43-year-old Shakira, a Colombian performer known for singing, hip shaking and, apparently, dancing with a rope. Among my Facebook friends alone there has been a disparity of comments, from my conservative friends who were distracted and horrified by the crotch grabbing and who bemoaned it as a setback of the #metoo movement, to my liberal friends, who appreciate her talent and her physical fitness, postulating that her performance has advanced the #metoo movement. How can JLo both set back and advance the status of women in one singular performance? Still, I can see both sides of this argument. I'm always torn about how women best express our feminine side - that which sets us apart from men - without becoming victim to society's vision of how it should be done. Women's femininity, or sexuality, has evolved at a break-neck pace since the innovation of the internet. Not to blame this on Al Gore, but I think the immediate availability of images, whether they be news-related, a celebrity's private moments, or vigorously produced porn has changed the way women see themselves, are allowed to see themselves, and want to see themselves. There are as many different types of women as there are women, and there is, I think, unprecedented acknowledgement of that in fashion and popular culture. Women are no longer ashamed to be overweight. Body positivity is the official name of the movement that encourages women to be happy as they are. Singer Lizzo has personified that movement as of late, encouraging her audience members to see themselves as beautiful no matter what the cultural standard. Self-described as fat, she wears the same leotard-style costumes that trimmer celebrities Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez have performed in, and Lizzo's back up dancers and band members are non-celebrity-traditional as well, that is, not thin and fit, but noticeably overweight. And her anthem "Good as Hell" is met by audience members on their feet, pumping their fists and screaming in unison the title response to "Baby, how you feelin'?" in the song's refrain.
Lizzo at a recent performance, right.
My friend Michelle Calhoun, who is a life-coach and feminist, recently vlogged that our body type is pre-determined. That is, for us normal people - not for celebrities who have trainers and chefs and managers monitoring their every move - our body type is set by genetics. I suppose that's true, or else plastic surgeons would be a lot less busy. Some women have big boobs, some have small waists. Some have long legs, some have short torsos. Some women are size 2, some are size 16. But we have long been encouraged to achieve a certain body type, profiled by runway models who are 5'10" and weigh 120 pounds. Ain't no plastic surgeon who can make you 5'10." Michelle encourages, like Lizzo does, women to be content and confident in the body they're in. It's as if the universe is saying "I'm OK, You're OK" - for umpteenth time. In contrast, in the new Netflix documentary, "Miss Americana," Taylor Swift discusses the effect American popular culture has on her own self image. Even as an icon of culture she is influenced by it. As a size 00 she was called beautiful, but then criticized for not having a butt, in an era when "the butt is everything," referring to recent celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Nicki Minaj who are known almost exclusively for the size of their bums. But, Taylor said, "You can't be a size 00 and have a butt!" Then when she put on weight (blooming all the way to a size 6) she was criticized for being heavy. She admits to being desperately dependent on what other people think about her; so if on the one hand fans and pundits who define the narrative are demanding she be both skinny and curvy, how can she be both? And to make it even more difficult, the loud and spirited argument about what femininity is most often comes from women, our own worst enemy. It was women on my Facebook page who were criticizing Jennifer Lopez's Super Bowl performance, and women in the Taylor Swift documentary who were criticizing her weight. Women who cannot sit uncomfortably in the tension within which we live: How women can be both sexy and modest. I wrestled with this recently when I stepped out my front door to the Gasparilla Pirate parade, an annual event in Tampa which is not relegated to a spectator sport. Parade goers fully participate in the event, dressing up as pirates and wenches, complete with the marauding proclivities of over-drinking and sexual impropriety. The young women especially took the wench costume to heart, many deferring to the "sexy wench" category in the Halloween costume aisle - which raises the question, why, at Halloween are so many of the female adult costumes preceded with the word "sexy" and followed by a short skirt and thigh-high pantyhose (which, outside of Halloween are not even worn any more)? Anyway, I posted several pictures of costumed parade goers as I experienced this event for the first time. As women were slightly more participatory in the costuming, all of my pictures were of women, some in full pirate regalia from headdress to black boots, while others were in very little costumes, covered only by a little fishnet hosiery. I took the pictures because both ends of the spectrum made me giggle. I offered no commentary regarding the pictures, referring only to the abundance of alcohol in my post. One picture, of a well-endowed young woman whose tank top and skirt did not leave much to the imagination, spurred a number of reactions from friends. I didn't perceive that my friends were overly critical of the young woman's wardrobe decisions, rather just remarking on the shocking amount of skin available for viewing. So I was stung by a comment from a young woman who used to be in my youth group at St. Peter's 10 years ago. Kirsten, now in her mid-20s, a member the generation that I perceive as more accepting of body styles and wardrobe choices than those of us who are, well, the same age as Jennifer Lopez, had this to say:
"I think publicly shaming a young woman on her outfit choice is the bad look here," she posted. I've been thinking about that for several days now. Am I shaming her by posting her picture in my gaggle of photos of people whom I thought were both over- and under-dressed in the theme of pirates and wenches? Then JLo and Shakira shake their barely-clad booties and grab their crotches and perform age-defying dance choreography in front of 103 million people, some of whom are devastatingly offended and others who cheered them on. Part of me does say, though, why does she have to wear only a leotard? Why can't she wear pants? I know her legs look great, and they should, because that's her job to look great and I'm sure she works very hard at it, but is showing your sexy a necessary component of being sexy? Can we just know that you have great looking legs by the way you dance, not because we can see them up to your waist? My worst fear in this discussion is being accused of acting like a conservative old lady. And I don't wanna be a conservative old lady! I'm glad JLo is 50, and that she's able to pole dance, sing, change costumes, sing, salsa, sing with her daughter, change costumes and dance some more. I think that's what makes me less critical of her. She's had a 30-year career in show business, including movies, TV and music. She's worth $400 million, and while maybe all of her spousal choices haven't been the best (Arod will be hubby No. 4), I can't criticize that. And she appears to take her role as Mom seriously. I have long maintained that women are different from men. Seems obvious, I know. But as the conversation for equality has gotten louder over the past 50 years, I have worked to remind women to remember that women bring different things to the table - collaboration, intuitive decision making and natural empathy - that are important to balance the traits of males - control, power and results oriented management. I lobby for women to continue to act like women, and not become men with boobs. If we're just men with boobs, then how does that make the world a better place? If you put that into clothing, doesn't it make sense that Jennifer Lopez should wear a sparkly bodysuit and rapper Bad Bunny should be dragging around in over-sized pants? Women have long been treated as inferior to men, especially in the workplace, making lower wages and getting passed over for jobs they are imminently more qualified for. But these women performers, who, grant it, have very few clothes on, are worth more financially than the majority of the men in the stadium or watching from home. How they look in their clothing and their ability to dance have, actually, created their worth. And it's a lot of worth. So why are women criticizing them for the way they have achieved their success? I wondered if the detractors of Sunday's show are simply jealous - a complex female emotion that rears its head in clandestine ways. Can we be honest with ourselves girls? If I looked like JLo at my age, would I not hang on a stripper pole, too? Maybe. Is there a part of me that wants to do that? Definitely. Will I? Absolutely not. And not because I can't, but because I don't have a personal trainer, chef, nor the ambition to lose enough weight to hang from a pole without risking serious injury. As Michelle advises, I'm fairly content with the body I'm in, and which I've always been in. I enjoy dessert too much and am not a fan of crying all the time as a result of low blood sugar. Jesus commanded us to Love your neighbor as yourself, Mark 12:31. Does this mean we don't love ourselves if we can't love and appreciate and cheer for the accomplishments of other women that are different from our own? Those of us who are JLo's age and more grew up with the maxim: "You can never be too rich or too thin," famously re-quoted in 1970 by Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, and wife of abdicated King Edward VIII, and it is well ingrained into our DNA that thin is best, rich is better. We are several generations of women who do not love ourselves and more likely live in loathe with ourselves. We can always stand to lose 10 pounds and need just a bit more income. Maybe, as a therapist once told me, the problem isn't with them, it's with me. An armchair psychologist such as myself might say that this skin baring is an attempt to attract the opposite sex. Not gonna lie. I've done it. I was 22 once. Isn't that the goal of many creatures in the animal kingdom, to be desired, and ultimately, to mate? Not only to reproduce, but to have a partner, a friend, or what some call a soulmate. Jennifer Lopez even admitted as much in her tour documentary on YouTube; she told friends that even her two brief early marriages (each lasted less than a year), were part of a desperate search for someone to call at the end of the day. Jennifer Lopez just wants to be liked by someone, much like all of us ordinary people. Immediate attraction has longed seemed to be the most efficient way to start that conversation. A shocking appearance - wearing as few clothes as possible - is often designed to try to entice a male into conversation, or sex, which some women confuse as a relationship. Insects, reptiles and birds use these tactics too - showing off, singing loudly, offering intoxicating substances - so it's no surprise that humans think this might work. And it does, to some extent. Celebrities use it (the promise of sex through crotch grabbing and pornographic choreography) to get more people to look at them, because the more people who look at them, the more money they make. Even though performers don't get paid directly for the Super Bowl performance, the NFL pays all the production costs, and performers see bumps in their stock - two years ago Justin Timberlake saw a 500% increase in sales of his new record after performing at the show. And he performed with all his clothes on. I appreciate that women such as Michelle, Kirsten and Lizzo are trying to change the mindset that thin is the only definition of attractive on behalf of a generation of women, and encouraging women to dress for themselves, not for anyone else. My daughter Isabel and I often argue appropriate fashion choices of women in her generation, and perhaps that was my unspoken but visual commentary on the revelers last weekend here in Tampa. My generation - including me - remains critical of other women who are not adhering to my (now old fashioned) standards. Every generation has this discussion to some extent - my mom probably furrowed her brows at my teenage choice of neon accessories, bangle bracelets to my elbows and lopsided hair, fashion set by our 80s mogul, Madonna, who shocked the world by rolling around on the MTV stage in a wedding dress singing "Like a Virgin." And the generation before, in the early 60s, Isabel's Aunt BJ joined her contemporaries in eschewing white gloves, once a wardrobe staple for young, college-age women, as Petula Clark recommended they go Downtown to "forget all your cares."
Smack dab in the mid-80s, 1985. Now that I look back, it seems there were poor fashion choices all around.
Part of the joy of being a woman is that we have the ability to constantly reinvent ourselves. Fashion is the easiest way to do it, which we discover as teenagers. Later, we are reinvented as someone's wife, someone's mom, someone's employee, someone's friend, someone's widow. Women even change our names according to some of the new people we become; men never do. They're always the same old boring guy. It's kind of cool to be a girl. So come on, ladies. Love yourself, and love each other.
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