If you didn’t hear about the halftime show heard ‘round the world, you might live under a rock. I am not a sporting person, more of a snacker type, so I never care who’s playing with what ball and I don’t remember the last time I watched halftime, um, entertainment. However, this year I did happen to sit with my husband and seventeen year-old son and bacon-wrapped jalapeños and queso and I don’t even know why.
I also don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook (I do, actually, try and live under a rock) but I did log in the next morning and quickly wrote Katie Sowers, the first female NFL coach in history, a letter. I told her thank you for setting an intelligent example for girls and women and how I would have preferred to watch more of her story for the entire halftime than sit with my boys and endure a performance that included a to-go strip pole. After a while, and many, many comments, I thought, ‘Oh, this is a thing today.’ People were outraged. People were outraged about the outrage. I heard it called Zoomba porn. I heard it called a beautiful celebration of cultural diversity. It was such a dizzying fireworks show of opinions coming in quick succession, I daresay children had to raise themselves that Super Monday while the adults sorted everything out.
I realize I am in the minority when it comes to my feelings about deconstructive dialogue on the world wide web: ain’t nobody got time when you’re trying to live a present life. So I deleted my post (this is a thing you can easily do, y’all) and I went about my day trying to untangle the cluster in my own heart:
-Was I wrong for feeling angry that women were offering themselves as objects when I fought my whole life mostly unsuccessfully against being treated as one?
-Was the community I am in engaging in the hard work of racial reconciliation right when it celebrated this event as women of color being given a platform to celebrate their cultures?
-Has culture ever even been a fair standard to women or people of color or could there be two different definitions where one is a celebration and the other is manipulation for keeping everyone in their proper hierarchal places?
-Did J Lo consider her performance at all in light of how the Superbowl is famous for its luring by internet advertising of global predators to use women and children for sex?
-Was my friend wrong who felt triggered sitting next to her husband who had a current struggle with pornography they are trying to work through?
-Did J Lo explain strip poles to her preteen daughter before or after putting her in a cage?
-If this particular halftime show is just one snapshot of the entire problematic problem with an unprecedented globally sexually exploited culture, where is all this outrage the rest of the year?
These days I am trying to ask better questions. Having been on the frontline in the movement to end sexual exploitation on everything from legislation to education to victim support for the last several years, I see that outrage is only able to ever accomplish one of two things:
1) nothing
2) something
For those falling into the first camp, this is a form of practical apathy. I couldn’t find any quotes from the good Mr. Rogers about people who have a lot of words but don’t do much about them. For the rest of us, I’ve made a list of things we can do, and continue to do, while Facebook sets itself on fire (and thank you, thank you, for loving well and being a people investing in the dignity of others):
1. Write your local legislators. They want to get re-elected so they have to listen to you. Read The Beginner’s Guide to Changing the World: 7 tips on creating legislative change.
2. Talk to your kids. The normalization and mainstream sexualization of kids is working to desensitize them (and us) to what is decent and how all humans deserve to be treated with dignity. Use this as just one of the daily opportunities to teach your boys and your girls how to be the not fun kind of feminists that are for the protection, support and raising up of women.
3. Join the National Decency Coalition. Keep up with the very latest on national movements and volunteer for projects happening in your own communities and state.
4. Write Katie Sowers a thank you letter. And while you’re at it, just forward a copy of it to the folks over at the Superbowl.
5. Join National Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation. With quick-sign petitions, emergency alerts on national legislation and a yearly summit for ground zero efforts against sexual exploitation, NCOSE make it too easy for us to ignore or not get involved.
6. Find out what’s going on in your local community to support victims of sexual exploitation. This will take much less time than responding to others’ internet outrage.
7. Donate to Jesus Said Love, an organization that offers resources that awaken hope and empower change through programs impacting both the supply and demand sides of commercial sex exploitation (or A21 or Unbound Global or U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking or any where)
8. Watch the documentary Blind Eyes Opened, a new film that exposes the ties between pornography and human trafficking and tells stories from the victims’ perspectives along with the struggles and hopes of law enforcement and organizations’ efforts to end exploitation.
9. Speak up straight to the source. The following quote from Sports Illustrated is the picture of our American culture (anyone else think it’s a hot load of horsecrappery how a man has these kinds of trite words on how women get treated but men playing sports for millions of dollars is a ‘difficult conversation’? Just me? Okay):
“Sometimes I have to double-check to make sure people are serious with their outrage. It’s outrageous. I’ve even seen some asking what they should tell their kids. I guess not to be cheerleaders for the NFL if the outfits the two megastars wore was so upsetting. What do they say about what we see on sidelines every Sunday? For all those jeer leaders, here’s what I told mine. “Guys, come over here. Shakira and J-Lo are killing it!” If the Super Bowl is a family show, it led to a family dance party in my household. And truth be told, I never really knew that we could dance like that. In all seriousness, talking to my kids about how dangerous football is while simultaneously enjoying it is a far more difficult conversation for me. I’d much rather have them try what J-Lo and Shakira did than what Patrick Mahomes and Richard Sherman do.” (Robin Lundberg, Sports Illustrated)
When I express a little fire at what I see as a threat to dignity, my husband always says, ‘What are you going to do? Write a letter?’ And I say, ‘Yeah. I am.’ And I often do. Think the Trojan commercials between segments of Spongebob are inappropriate? Write a letter. Tired of the F bomb coming through the radio with your kids in the car? Call the Federal Communications Commission. Upset at the Department of Justice for not upholding the literal law for human decency because child pornography is actually illegal? Make some noise. The world wide web is a wealth of information, contacts, and general highways to doing. (Here is Robin Lundberg’s information—He also has a twitter account and a show on ESPN if you’d like to educate them about crappery. See how easy it is?)
10. Do better. It’s easy to point fingers and fiery torches at Shakira and Jennifer Lopez because they shake that glitter, but really, they are just one symptom of a global fever we have all contributed to in one way or another. Behind the scenes is where change takes place. We could each do better, couldn’t we? It starts with our own choices. We can do things like educate ourselves on what it means to be considered a minority or woman in this country or learn about how our national pornography crisis is actual human trafficking or check our ineffective outrage along with our coats at the door. Maybe most importantly? We can learn to ask ourselves better questions.
Good questions inform. Great questions transform. ~Ken Coleman