For Latinas, Super Bowl 2020 Was a Night of Triumph—And Debate
During the 2020 Super Bowl, Shakira, 43, and 50-year-old Jennifer Lopez—two women who are factually closer to AARP eligibility than they are to the legal drinking age—gave a performance that combined pole dancing and politics in equal measure.
“It gave me chills,” says Maria Aguilera, a 27-year-old TV news reporter who lives in Waco, Texas, of the Super Bowl halftime show.
Aguilera “absolutely loved” the spectacle, which featured Shakira and J.Lo along with Latino performers J. Balvin and Bad Bunny, who sang in Spanish. Near the end of the performance, Lopez’s 11-year-old daughter, Emme, sat in a makeshift cage along with other caged children and sang her mother’s hit “Let’s Get Loud,” segueing into “Born in the USA” as Lopez reemerged, draped in an American flag that opened to reveal a Puerto Rican flag. For much of the audience, the result was eating-a-popsicle-in-a-wet-swimsuit-on-the-Fourth-of-July chills.
“I felt at home watching them,” Aguilera adds. “And I loved that millions were watching with me. It made me feel so proud to be a Latina.”
Earlier that night a Mexican American, bipolar, sexually fluid, recovering drug addict performed the national anthem. Demi Lovato—who has struggled so publicly and reveled in her identity so proudly—delivered a full-throated performance. Moments before that, Yolanda Adams, a 58-year-old black gospel star, had smashed open the event with a rendition of “America, the Beautiful” with a local choir.
The Super Bowl 2020, an all-American event whose megawatt splendor has been somewhat dimmed thanks to the sport’s dangers, seedy corporate interests, and the unapologetic racist rage focused on Colin Kaepernick, managed to this time showcase unprecedented Latinx pride. The effect was wildly patriotic, a word that’s often reserved for white people eating meat in trucks. There were all the hallmarks of celebrating America—flags, singing, wide-open skies, exposed female flesh, smiling children, electric guitars. And something else: acknowledgment that America’s greatness is in its diversity—and that it pays to have women run the show.
Sierra White, a 33-year-old social media manager in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who is half Puerto Rican, says J.Lo’s ecstatic acknowledgment of Puerto Rico was more than nostalgic. “I think people forget that Puerto Rico is technically part of the U.S. and has been forgotten about by too many—especially with all of the natural disasters that have hit the island, leaving thousands and thousands in poverty and abhorrent living conditions,” she says. “Seeing strong, powerful Latinas represented was powerful.”
But for Veralucia Mendoza, a 26-year-old university employee in Toledo, who is Afro-Latina and was formerly an undocumented immigrant, the supposed show of representation was a letdown.
“I’m disappointed that Latinxs choose to ignore the call for boycotts by black activists,” she says, pointing out that the show didn’t include a single Afro-Latinx performer. (Adams, who opened the game, isn’t Latina.) “Some of the worst colorism I’ve ever faced was back in South America, in my home country,” Mendoza says. She’s part of Mijente, a group that bills itself as “a political home for Latinx and Chicanx organizing,” and shared thoughtful criticism throughout the show. “I don’t know what Latinx pride means without collective liberation and solidarity across the board,” Mendoza says. “If that’s the price to pay for Latinx representation, then I don’t want it. I don’t want a whitewashed version of us.” She chose not to watch the show in protest.
Luz Chavez, a 42-year-old Latina from Chicago, pointed out that critics like Mendoza aren’t being demanding—they’re just calling for authentic advocacy. Solidarity, in addition to sequins. "What kind of Latina you wanna be this year?” she asks. “One like Cardi B, who refused to perform for the Super Bowl halftime show in solidarity with Kaepernick and black communities? Or one like J.Lo and Shakira?” She goes on, “The halftime show was being touted as ‘the most Hispanic Super Bowl ever.’ This was a moment powerhouse Latinxs had the world in their hands and the power to flip the script and show Black-Latinx solidarity, which would have been earth-shattering to Trump and his white supremacist base.”
But Carla Gonzalez, a 36-year-old in Phoenix, loved the halftime show. “I liked J.Lo's attempt to bring a political message with the cages and the children,” she says, praising both women’s performances. But she adds, “I believe Black Lives Matter, and I think that they could have done a bigger push of bringing that narrative into their performance and exemplify black and brown solidarity.” Melissa Carmona, a 28-year-old Colombian American mental health counselor who goes by “The Spanglish Therapist” on Instagram, wrote, “Part of what impacted the way I saw myself when I moved to the U.S. was not seeing and hearing more people like me be represented on TV in ways that did not involve drugs (among many other stereotypes).” Seeing the women perform, as well as J. Balvin, who she pointed out has been open about his mental health struggles, was “freakin’ cool.” The complexity of the performance is leading to “great and important conversations,” she says.
The halftime show also tripped a classic controversy—were the hypersexualized outfits, dance moves, tongues, and canes belittling to women, or empowering? Did the show objectify women through the lens of male pleasure, or give women a venue in which to captain their own powerful sexualities? Should children have averted their eyes, or is exposed flesh no big deal compared with the importance of the border atrocities the performance alluded to?
These are questions we could—and maybe should—debate until Shakira’s rope and J.Lo’s cane disintegrate. But the questions also make assumptions that are worth parsing. Shakira’s now infamous tongue moment, for example, was a zaghroota, a traditional cry of joy that evokes the singer’s lesser known Arab roots. And where some saw skin, Sierra White says that the women and their backup crew “showed how beautiful Latin dancing is and how physically strong women are.”
So, another year, another Super Bowl, with its tender moments and touchdowns and controversies and commercials. And as ever, another super-dose of patriotic pride, this time with a recovering bulimic; Jenny from the Block, now 50; and a Colombian Arab woman who is famous, in part, for songs about Africa and her truth-telling hips. Tell me that’s not patriotic. What could be more American than stripping, pop music, racial and ethnic diversity, and music about butts?
Jenny Singer is a staff writer for Glamour.
Originally Appeared on Glamour
