I just saw a few Facebook posts and ensuing threads engaging in discussion of the appropriateness of Beyonce's Superbowl Wardrobe. This spurred a few questions I'd like to pose to anyone seriously going there. Not that this post is going in any solid direction, but the echoes of the nipple incident are amusing to me.
Comments on Facebook include asking why the dancers have to always wear leotards, put their crotches in our faces, and be so hyper-sexualized. The concern for the impression it was suddenly setting for daughters everywhere seems pretty universal.
Right... because there's no tradition of flagrant crotch showing and skimpily clothed dancing in football. Luckily nobody in America is putting a daughter into cheerleading before the age of 18 though.
Hmm. Well, at least we're not exposed to this kind of filth in other highly popular sports with large female focus aired during daytime hours, such as Olympic ice skating.
Well... I mean, at least there's really no sex in the most popular forms of dancing in general...
From the official Dancing with the Stars page. Hey Concerned Mom! Watching DWTS at 8 Eastern, 7 Central every Sunday with your impressionable daughters?
Hmmm. Maybe we should go back to the good old days of selling sex to kids in well clothed boy band form in the middle of a Disney stage? Because that's not messed up at all if you really think about it.
Side note: how many people remember any Superbowl half time show from the 90s or prior?
NONE. BECAUSE... THEY. WERE. UNWATCHABLE. OK maybe I exaggerate a bit... but let's at least appreciate the production value people.
So all this fretting about our little kids' futures being corrupted due to a brief pause of the sport we've invited them to watch with us, where giant warrior men run at each other full speed and attempt to make brain smoothies with each other.
No one gets this upset that commercials featuring brutal combat and frivolous gun scenes, such as Jack Reacher movies and Call of Duty games, are spammed every Sunday afternoon throughout game times.
Keep in mind I'm saying this as a consumer of much of those violent media that I fight for every day as valid adult art experiences. I LOVE football and played it in my teens. I love action movies and games.
But the underlying message for anyone that seriously raises objections over a Superbowl halftime on grounds of family appropriateness is: "Sex BAD and UNUSUAL. Violence GOOD and NORMAL," unless you are also raising hell over what the NFL actually is and what's being marketed alongside the NFL product every day.
While we get all caught up in the importance of Beyonce's wardrobe and its effects on our kids, we usher them routinely into activities, toys and engagements that are just as if not more inappropriate.
In 2005, global sales were two billion dollars and by 2006 Bratz had about forty percent of the fashion-doll market (via Wikipedia).
'Merica!
