Tanner Conley
Staff Writer
A Wyoming House of Representatives member has garnered national attention by sharing his thoughts on the Super Bowl halftime show.
Wyoming House District 31 Representative Scott Clem was deep in the comment section of his election platform on Facebook when he responded to a comment in defense of “the higher virtues of character, value, integrity and respect”.
“[Jennifer Lopez and Shakira] were acting like whores,” Clem said in the comment, “They weren’t just dancing. It was a carefully choreographed sexual performance”.
While some apparently agree with the message behind Clem’s words, many, like junior Hallie Jette, disagree.
“I don’t think they were acting like whores, they were just showing their Latin heritage. I disagree with his statement because Latin culture and Latin dancing encompasses much of what they did,” Jette said.
Katie Wilhelm, a junior, was also bothered by Clem’s comments.
“If you had a male artist that by chance has sexual lyrics or doesn’t wear a shirt during the halftime show, most likely he wouldn’t get this sort of negative feedback or anything like that. So that’s the main part that is bothering about this,” said Wilhelm.
However, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), they received 55 complaints where frontman Adam Levine removed his shirt as part of the performance. These complaints largely claimed that it was a double standard for CBS to be fined for briefly showing a female breast (referring to Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake during the Super Bowl 38 halftime show) but did not receive any punishment for including a man’s chest.
Artists Jennifer Lopez and Shakira intentionally included specific Latin American influences into their performance in order to highlight the minorities’ achievement in the modern world.
“I think it’s super important for two Latina women to be headlining the Super Bowl,” Lopez told the Los Angeles Times, “Especially right now in Trump’s America”.
The Branding Iron reached out to Rep. Clem for an interview and he provided the following statement.
“Our society and American popular culture denigrates women to a baser sort, implying their worth is in their sexuality…That’s just plain wrong–and yet these two performers seemed to be complicit in pushing that sexual narrative–in front of millions of young women and men who watched it. Leviticus 19:29’Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.’ What these women were teaching young people was this its admirable to aspire to be a sexual object…
There’s nothing dignified in rubbing your crotch on national tv and dancing on
stripper pole…The first thing that comes to our culture’s mind about women
should NOT be sex, or how good they look half naked…Our cultural emphasis
should be on the content of people’s character…The message that young people
got from that performance? ‘What’s cool and worth aspiring to is sex appeal; my
worth will come in my sex appeal towards others.’
Instead of appealing to the higher virtues of character, value, integrity and respect, they appealed to the lowest of base animal instincts, and that is a shame to our society–who claims they want to aspire to so much more, yet their actions speak otherwise…While our culture wants to appeal to your base animal instincts, some of us want people to aspire to a higher calling…”
While this defense certainly solidified Clem’s stance on this particular issue, many viewed this act of ‘doubling down’ as a step in the wrong direction.
“I get what he’s trying to defend. I get what he’s trying to say…but as a woman, I feel women should be able to specifically wear (their outfits) and not be automatically put under the sexual fantasy line by the men watching…women should be able to wear something that isn’t super conservative and not be judged,” Wilhelm said.
This controversy also raises the question; should our elected officials even be weighing in on the behavior of two women, who have likely never been to Wyoming, during the Super Bowl when our state is on the verge of economic uncertainty?
“I probably wouldn’t have said anything.” Wilhelm said, “…There’s more important things that an elected official or someone with power to be focusing on than the choreography than the clothing and choreography of the halftime show.”
