“Being Sexy” Is Not the Highest Virtue For Women To Attain

(I know I’m late to the game with this blog, but I had to wait until my anger subsided to write on it. While the rest of the world has moved on from this issue, I feel I have a unique perspective on it given my background. So, now that the dust has settled and the Holy Spirit has reigned me in, let’s talk about…The Superbowl halftime show.)

I’m gonna throw it out there and say I wasn’t a fan of the halftime show.

“PRUDE!”

It really bothers me that I can’t watch it with my family or even at all.

“Oh my word, so scandalized. Tell you what, next year we’ll have an Amish choir come in and sing so you can stop clutching your pearls already.”

Because I want it to be family-friendly that immediately equates Amish choir music to you? There’s no in-between? Either we have to have scantily clad pole dancers or it’s Amish women? Those are our two choices?

“Did you even see Jennifer Lopez? She’s a freaking 50-year old woman and she looked sexy and hot. We should celebrate the fact that she’s not afraid to show off her confidence and sexuality!”

Oh yes, I did see Jennifer Lopez. I saw more than I cared to see. I had to turn off the TV after she bent over and displayed her butt cheeks to the camera with nothing but a thin piece of leather covering her lady parts.

RACIST! YOU ARE SO RACIST!

Why?

“Those were Latina women up there showing off the Latino heritage and you’re criticizing them because they’re not like you!”

Since when did racy pole dancing become exclusively connected to Latino culture? Seems to me it’s more a part of the stripper culture.

“You really must hate women. You’re so scandalized by a little bit of skin that you’d be happy if women were covered head-to-toe. Such a holy roller. Oh, and btw, pole dancing is a difficult workout. Ms. Lopez did it with such grace and style. We should celebrate that 50-year old women don’t have to be like the Golden Girls anymore. We can embrace our sexuality!”

I’m sure it is a workout. Personally, I like pushing weight around in the gym and, hey, if you want to take those pole-dancing classes, go for it. I just don’t understand why it has to be part of primetime television where millions of families are tuning in. Am I allowed to have any standards? Is there anything that would be too much for you? Do you have a line that could be crossed at all?

Let’s step away from the conversation for a moment. What is my real driving force behind disliking the halftime show? Well, let’s talk about three women I once knew.

My bachelor’s degree is in criminology and my master’s degree is in applied behavioral science where I specialized in sex crimes. These degrees landed me a job as a counselor, advocate, and coordinator for the rape crisis program where I worked in Panama City. Two things shocked me when I started working there: One was all the incest cases I had to deal with and, two was the number of women who came to me from the sex industry, specifically strip clubs.

A high majority of women I saw for counseling were dancers. The first one I ever met was forced into it by her husband because he was unwilling to get a job. He was more interested in doing drugs in the motel room that they lived in. We’ll call her Jessica. Jessica was young and definitely from a rough background. She’d been abused as a child in every way you can imagine. She told me, “That first day when I started dancing on stage, I hated every second of it. I tried to imagine nobody in the room but that was so hard. The other dancers told me that it helps to drink to get through it, so I’m pretty much drinking the whole time I’m at work. Guys’ hands are all over me and I hate it. I hate my husband for forcing me to do this. You know what’s crazy? He forces me to do this, but then he gets mad at me for having guys stare at me.”

I tried as hard as I could to encourage her to get a job that she could feel good about but with no diploma and little experience, it was hard to find anything that paid her enough to support her family. The cash from dancing barely kept them afloat.

Then there was the trafficked Russian woman that I tried to help. She had been sex trafficked here to the States. Once here illegally, she was forced to be a dancer–pole twirling and all. I met her at the hospital where I found her covered with bruises. I tried to get her to come with me to our safe house but she was so terrified of her pimp that I couldn’t convince her. Through broken English, she told me that he threatened her all the time. He told her that if she ever tried to leave he’d report her to the authorities and she’d end up in prison forever for being here illegally. I tried to explain to her that those were all lies, but I couldn’t make her believe. She left the hospital that day with tears streaming down her cheeks and I never saw her again.

The last girl, though, was the hardest for me. I had been asked by a judge to visit with her as he suspected she needed counseling. At that time, she was currently living in a drug rehab house and that’s where I met her. The day I got there, I walked into a big room with lots of tables and she was already sitting in a chair waiting for me. When I sat down across from her, I knew instantly that this girl was beyond my help. In fact, it would take a miracle from God. Never in my life have I seen a person so broken and gone. There was zero life in her eyes. Never once did she even give me a feeble smile. She literally was a shell of a body sitting there and I could tell that what she may have once been was no more.

I’ll call her Alisha. According to her, she came from a good Christian family. Her parents were good ones and loved her well. Her freshman year of college, she was starting her journey towards attaining a hard-earned degree. At some point that year, several girlfriends of hers encouraged her to start dancing to make money to pay for school. She said, “At first, I thought they were crazy but then they kept talking about all the money you could make and it sounded not that bad. For some stupid reason, I decided to do it.”

She started pole dancing and stripping at a local place. “I hated it. My friends told me that it was normal to hate it at first. They told me to drink a little to take the edge off. I still hated it but I figured I just needed to get used to it. Then one night, I got asked to dance for a group of guys. I was all by myself and if you use your imagination, you can guess what happened to me that night. After that, I started using drugs and alcohol all the time. I dropped out of school and here I am. It was the worst decision I ever made. If I could go back, I’d never listen to those girls.”

I heard many other stories similar to these three women. It is because I have seen the fallout of the stripper culture and had to try to help mend shattered lives that I hate the Superbowl halftime show. We stand around and tell young women that they should be respected for their brains and talents. We tell them that they shouldn’t be objectified, yet we applaud Jennifer Lopez’s pole-dancing routine because it’s “hot and sexy.” The message we send young women is so confusing.

And if you dare say that maybe this isn’t the message we should be sending young women, you will be lashed with your hands tied to the dancer’s pole. But, I have seen what this encouragement does to people’s lives. It’s not glamorous. It’s not graceful. And it’s not sexy. It’s horrible and we should be ashamed of ourselves for the message we are sending. All those years of working with women, I had to try and tell them that they were worthy of more; that they were special and had dignity. And do you know, not a one of them believed me? The scars of being used and objectified had done their job.

When famous women stand up on national television spinning around on poles with a thin veiling of clothing on, they are being role models. Not good ones, I might add. There are thousands of young female eyes watching and listening to us shout, “Wow! So sexy! Get it, girl!” They take it all in and think that those kinds of performances are what get you noticed and what makes you appealing. I’m not saying all young women will go off to become pole dancers because of the halftime show. However, they do internalize the reactions of our culture and many will come to believe that “being sexy” is actually a virtue.

Jennifer Lopez is a very beautiful woman. It’s wonderful that she is strong and healthy at her age. Sadly, though, there is nothing sexy about a woman who masks her true talents with oversexualized performances in order to get people to notice. There is nothing sexy about a woman who will do anything to stay relevant. You can be a strong, confident, talented, beautiful, artistic, entertaining woman without all the sexualization. In fact, the most beautiful women, inside and out, are those that don’t have to flaunt their “sexiness” at every turn but instead are secure in their abilities without resorting to such things.

As women, our number one job is not to be sexy. Instead, it is our job to be bearers of truth, goodness, and authentic beauty and to encourage other women in these areas, too. We can do better and, for the sake of many lives, we most definitely should. Let’s not glamorize something that has stripped so many of their dignity and self-respect. Jennifer Lopez does not have to deal with the fallout because she is sheltered by her fame. But, I have witnessed the destruction many times over and we are, sadly, praising something that has wounded many, many souls.