This year, Super Bowl LIV took place in Miami.  It was, therefore, appropriate for the halftime show to have a Latin beat, with Shakira and J-Lo as the headliners.  Still, some people asked, "Did the show have to be so vulgar?"

On the pro side, Shakira and J-Lo are both superb entertainers, the songs they used were fun and energetic, the Latin beat rocked, and the backup performers were excellent.  All in all, the show was a polished 14 minutes of top-flight Latin-infused pop music and dancing.

Any people who attended a stadium show just to see these two performers, both of whom sing and dance extremely well, would have felt they got their money's worth.  Bravo!

But on the con side, the show was vulgar, and that's not just because, in keeping with all Latin dancing going back to the early 20th century, there was a lot of hip-shaking.  Few people are going to get bent out of shape by that traditional Latin American dance dynamic.

While shaking hips are now old hat, there were still a lot of vulgar moves and costumes in the halftime show:

• Shakira implied bondage by wrapping a rope around herself.
• Bevies of athletic young women thrusting their pelvises at the TV cameras.
• Shakira writhed on the floor as a rapper bent over her body.
• Shakira ululated while flicking her tongue at the camera.
• J-Lo and her back-up dancers wore leather bondage outfits reminiscent of the leather gear fetish gay men wore in San Francisco's Folsom District in the 1970s and 1980s.
• J-Lo wagging her half-naked butt at the camera.
• J-Lo and her male backup dancers kept grabbing their own crotches.
• J-Lo did some pole-dancing in a minimalist costume that barely covered her lady parts, while presiding over what is meant to look like an orgy, with people in white bondage wear writhing below her (plus more crotch-grabbing).
• J-Lo freak-dancing, which happens when a woman backs her butt up to a man's crotch and they rub against each other as they dance.

With all of this sexually explicit dancing, it was bizarre to have the show end with a chorus of sweet-faced girls (including J-Lo's own daughter) doing the usual women's empowerment shtick.  For old-fashioned feminists, sexually objectifying oneself has little to do with empowerment.

At show's end, conservative viewers were not impressed.  Matt Walsh voiced his objection to the show's vulgarity, and a lot of people agreed:

I get that I'm a puritan prude fundamentalist etc and so forth blah blah, but I still think I should be able to watch the game with my kids. Including the half time show. This should be a family event. Maybe the 50 year old women can strip on their own time, not during the game.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) February 3, 2020

Completely agree. And ftr, I’m a non-Puritan Latina, and very much appreciate Latin culture and dancing. But it doesn’t typically involve thrusting your vagina into the camera. рџ¤·рџЏ»‍в™ЂпёЏ

— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) February 3, 2020

It was like Sodom and Gomorrah. I feel violated. What next, sex acts? A camera in their crotch. Where does this end? Do men have no virtue or honor?

— Just Sayin' (@justsayinmaybe) February 3, 2020

All it did was objectify women. I could have done with a lot less crotch shots and stripper poles with all the children watching this show

— Janice HB (@cciPRjan) February 3, 2020

Some, of course, had to make it all about raaaacism:

Did you protest when:
Maddona
Spears
Cher
Beyonce
Lady Gaga
Michael Jackson
Prince
Etc.

did it?

Its only wrong when two hugely successful Latin American women put on a tremendous show of Latin Zest & energy in display of THEIR American Dream?

Check your envy. Its ugly.

— Redeemed Diana (@DianaGLCPA) February 3, 2020

Here's the video — so if you have kids nearby, you've been warned:

And if you're yearning for more proof that the halftime shows are no longer family-friendly, contrast what you just saw with these shows from 1985 and 2000: